George Herbert Mead Quotes

“History is always the interpretation of the present”

— George Herbert Mead

“Our cautious ancestors, when yawning, blocked the way to the entrance of evil spirits by putting their hands before their mouths. We find a reason for the gesture in the delicacy of manner which forbids an indecent exposure.”

— George Herbert Mead

In wartime we identify ourselves with the nation, and its interests are the interests of our primal selves.

— George Herbert Mead

Imagery is not past but present. It rests with what we call our mental processes to place these images in a temporal order.

— George Herbert Mead

“Social psychology is especially interested in the effect which the social group has in the determination of the experience and conduct of the individual member.”

— George Herbert Mead

“No very sharp line can be drawn between social psychology and individual psychology.”

— George Herbert Mead

“To so enter into it in nature and art that the enjoyed meanings of life may become a part of living is the attitude of aesthetic appreciation.”

— George Herbert Mead

The beauty of a face is not a separate quality but a relation or proportion of qualities to each other.

— George Herbert Mead

“Man lives in a world of meaning.”

— George Herbert Mead

“The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.”

— George Herbert Mead

“The self has the characteristic that it is an object to itself, and that characteristic distinguishes it from other objects and from the body.”

— George Herbert Mead

“To be interested in the public good we must be disinterested, that is, not interested in goods in which our personal selves are wrapped up.”

— George Herbert Mead

A multiple personality is in a certain sense normal.

— George Herbert Mead

“Society is unity in diversity.”

— George Herbert Mead

What gives it its human character is that the individual through language addresses himself in the role of the others in the group and thus becomes aware of them in his own conduct.

— George Herbert Mead

“Warfare is an utterly stupid method of settling differences of interest between different nations.”

— George Herbert Mead

Social psychology has, as a rule, dealt with various phases of social experience from the psychological standpoint of individual experience.

— George Herbert Mead

“Our specious present as such is very short. We do, however, experience passing events; part of the process of the passage of events is directly there in our experience, including some of the past and some of the future.”

— George Herbert Mead

“Take the situation of a scientist solving a problem, where he has certain data, which call for certain responses. Some of this set of data call for his applying such and such a law, while others call for another law.”

— George Herbert Mead