Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
A society demanding endless choice and competing ideologies can cause instability until people commit to a path or fail.
In plain terms
Too many choices and conflicting views can keep a society restless.
What can you take from it?
Choices require commitment to find stability.

Where it applies

  • political discourse
  • cultural shifts

Putting it to work

  • analyze social unrest
  • guide policy decisions

Questions to consider

  • Does too much choice harm society?
  • How do you handle conflicting ideologies?

Another view

Choice is often valued over stability in modern democracies.

More from Margaret Mead

  1. A city must be a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know.

    Permalink to quote #4
  2. Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

    Permalink to quote #6
  3. A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen …

    Permalink to quote #3

Related quotes

  1. We have won on the Arlov, Kursk, Belgorod, and Kharkov grounds. We won because the country was being defended not only by the army but by the entire Soviet peo…

    Hovhannes BagramyanHovhannes Bagramyan quote #5
  2. Why do I think that we, the intellectuals, are able to help? Simply because we, the intellectuals, have done the most terrible harm for thousands of years. Mas…

    Karl PopperKarl Popper quote #54
  3. If I had been an Italian, I am sure I would have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites…

    Winston ChurchillWinston Churchill quote #1