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Who really said it

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else

Not Margaret Mead — printed as “Meade’s Maxim” Jim Wright Assistant editorial director, The Dallas Morning News · earliest located version, 1971
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Quote Investigator found “no substantive support” for Margaret Mead. The exact wording first appears in print in 1979 — the year after Mead died — in a Doubleday compilation of comic maxims, filed under the label “Meade’s Maxim,” spelled with an e and tied to no identified person. QI tentatively ascribes the earlier, rougher 1971 version of the joke to Dallas newspaperman Jim Wright.

Last verified 7 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else” Not Margaret Mead. Quote Investigator found no substantive support for her: the exact wording first appears in print in 1979, labeled "Meade's Maxim," in John Peers's compilation 1,001 Logical Laws (Doubleday, 1979), quote page 155. The earlier 1971 version — "How can I be unique just like everybody else?" — is tentatively ascribed to Dallas Morning News writer Jim Wright. Mead's name was not attached until 1989. — Quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Margaret Mead. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Jim Wright — wrote the 1971 version of the quip. Theme: "Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

A 1979 joke book, not a Mead lecture

Earliest printing of this wording
1,001 Logical Laws, Accurate Axioms, Profound Principles…
Compiler & publisher
Compiled by John Peers, edited by Gordon Bennett · Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York, 1979 · quote page 155
Printed label
“Meade’s Maxim” — spelled with an e, and attached to no identified person
Earlier related quip
Jim Wright, “On Second Thought,” The Dallas Morning News, 13 March 1971

Meade’s Maxim: Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else. Earliest exact match

As reproduced in Quote Investigator’s citation to quote page 155 of the 1979 Doubleday compilation. Note the spelling — Meade, with an e, and no first name.

Scanned book (Internet Archive lending copy)
1,001 Logical Laws (Doubleday, 1979)
Quote Investigator: the full citation trail, 1971 to 2001

How a maxim became a Mead quote

  • 13 March 1971 — the earliest evidence located by researchers is a rougher form of the joke. Writing in The Dallas Morning News column “On Second Thought,” assistant editorial director Jim Wright mocks the bestseller The Greening of America and its young revolutionaries with the question “How can I be unique just like everybody else?” Quote Investigator ↗
  • 1979 — the exact modern wording reaches print for the first time, in John Peers’s compilation 1,001 Logical Laws from Doubleday, where it is filed not under “Mead” but as “Meade’s Maxim” and credited to nobody in particular. Open Library record ↗ Margaret Mead had died in November 1978. Wikipedia ↗
  • 1989 — the anthropologist’s name attaches. Paul Dickson’s The New Official Rules prints “Mead’s Distinction. You are totally unique, just like everyone else” and credits Margaret Mead; a St. Petersburg Times panel by Don Addis that December runs the same wording under “Margaret Meade.” Quote Investigator ↗
  • Today — Wikiquote lists the line among Mead’s Disputed quotations, noting the 1979 “Meade’s Maxim” designation was “not linked directly to Margaret Mead” and that there is “no definitely documented evidence” she said it. Wikiquote ↗

No rights status can honestly be asserted for this sentence, because it has no identified author. Its earliest located printing is quote page 155 of John Peers’s 1,001 Logical Laws (Doubleday, 1979) — a post-1930 book still in copyright as a compilation — but there the line is filed under a jokey label rather than credited to anyone, and it may well have circulated in speech before that. It is certainly not Margaret Mead’s, and it is not demonstrably public domain.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

How Mead’s name got welded to it

Margaret Mead is one of the internet’s most dependable magnets for warm, tidy sayings she never published. This one seems to have arrived by a clerical accident — a single stray letter.

Margaret Mead Disputed

Wikiquote files the line under Disputed, recording that it “was designated ‘Meade’s Maxim’ in a 1979 book… and not linked directly to Margaret Mead,” and that there is “no definitely documented evidence of this.” Wikiquote ↗

“Meade’s Maxim” One stray letter

Quote Investigator’s conjecture is that the Mead ascription grew out of a misreading of the 1979 label, which is spelled Meade. QI adds that Peers sometimes chose such labels for comic effect, so “the saying may not even be solidly linked to someone named Meade.” Quote Investigator ↗

“totally” vs. “absolutely” Variant

The two 1989 sightings that first put Mead’s name on the joke both read “You are totally unique, just like everyone else” — Paul Dickson’s The New Official Rules as “Mead’s Distinction,” and a St. Petersburg Times panel by Don Addis that spells her “Margaret Meade.” The “absolutely” wording on today’s posters comes from the 1979 book, not from them. Quote Investigator ↗

Red Green Later borrower

A March 2001 newspaper column written in the voice of the Red Green television character ran “Always remember you’re unique, just like everyone else” under his name; QI notes the comedy team behind the show employed the quip when it was already in circulation. Quote Investigator ↗

The closest thing to an author is a Dallas newspaperman. Quote Investigator finds “no substantive support” for Margaret Mead and says the 1971 version of the joke — “How can I be unique just like everybody else?” — “can tentatively be ascribed to Jim Wright.” Quote Investigator ↗

Context

An insult that became a compliment

The joke started life as a sneer. In a March 1971 Dallas Morning News column, assistant editorial director Jim Wright took aim at The Greening of America ↗, Charles A. Reich’s 1970 bestseller about a rising generation remaking the country, and asked the deflating question “How can I be unique just like everybody else?” ↗ The target was mass nonconformity — a whole cohort declaring its individuality in unison.

The version that sells posters and graduation cards points the other way. It is reassurance, not mockery, and it travels under the name of Margaret Mead ↗, the cultural anthropologist who died in November 1978. It fits her public voice well enough that it stuck. It is also, as far as anyone has documented, not hers: the sentence first surfaces in print the following year, in a book of comic maxims, credited to a “Meade” who may never have existed.

Written to mock the crowd. Sold to comfort the individual.

But a student says he heard her say it

Wikiquote carries one piece of anecdotal testimony, flagged as needing a citation. Alex Randall, describing himself as a graduate student with Mead from 1974 to 1977, is quoted saying: “I heard her say these words in a class as a graduate student. I took them down as notes for the class. I can’t say they were unique to her, but she certainly said this.” Wikiquote, Disputed ↗

Take that at face value and it still does not make Mead the author. The quip was already in a Dallas newspaper in 1971, before those classes; and Randall himself allows that the words were not unique to her. Repeating a good line in a lecture is how sayings spread, not how they start — and it is exactly how a teacher’s name ends up welded to one.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Humility Character Wisdom

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: the full investigationquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor research: the 1971 Dallas column, the 1979 “Meade’s Maxim” printing, and the 1989 arrival of Mead’s name.
Wikiquote: Margaret Mead (Disputed)en.wikiquote.org

Files the line under Disputed: designated “Meade’s Maxim” in 1979 and “not linked directly to Margaret Mead.”
Open Library: 1,001 Logical Laws (1979)openlibrary.org

Catalog record for the Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1979 compilation that first printed this exact wording.
Internet Archive: the 1979 compilationarchive.org

Lending scan of John Peers’s 1,001 Logical Laws, the book behind the “Meade’s Maxim” label.
Wikipedia: Margaret Meaden.wikipedia.org

Biography of the anthropologist the line is pinned on: 1901–1978, curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History.
Wikipedia: The Greening of Americaen.wikipedia.org

Charles A. Reich’s 1970 bestseller — the target of the 1971 column that carries the earliest version of the joke.

The closest thing to an author

Who the joke actually belongs to

Jim Wright

Assistant editorial director, The Dallas Morning News · wrote the 1971 version of the quip

Quote Investigator identifies Jim Wright as an assistant editorial director for The Dallas Morning News, and “tentatively” credits him with the earliest located version of the joke — a March 1971 column taking aim at the counterculture bestseller The Greening of America. He is a newspaperman, not the Texas congressman of the same name. Even so, Wright owns the idea rather than the sentence: the polished wording that circulates today first shows up eight years later, in a joke compilation, with no author attached to it.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented printing

Earliest exact match located by Quote Investigator: John Peers, comp., 1,001 Logical Laws, Accurate Axioms, Profound Principles, ed. Gordon Bennett (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1979), quote page 155, where the line is labeled “Meade’s Maxim.” Attribution history traced in Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Always Remember That You Are Absolutely Unique. Just Like Everyone Else,” November 10, 2014.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else’?” Last verified 7 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/always-remember-that-you-are-absolutely-unique-just-like/

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