Ruth Benedict Quotes

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• The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.

  Ruth Benedict

  Science, Differences, Safety

  111 Copy quote

• We do not see the lens through which we look.

  Ruth Benedict

  Lenses, Looks, Unreasonable

  Ruth Benedict (1922). “Scientific Papers”

  12 Copy quote

• No one culture has ever developed all human potentialities; it has always selected certain capacities, mental and emotional and moral, and stifled others. Each culture is a system of values which may well complement the values in another.

  Ruth Benedict

  Emotional, Culture, May

  Ruth Benedict (2011). “An Anthropologist at Work”, p.441, Transaction Publishers

  44 Copy quote

• No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking.

  Ruth Benedict

  Eye, Men, Thinking

  Ruth Benedict (1973). “Patterns of Culture”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  53 Copy quote

• The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural.

  Ruth Benedict

  Differences, Culture, Humans

  8 Copy quote

• The life-history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.

  Ruth Benedict

  Community, Culture, Shapes

  Patterns of Culture ch. 1 (1934)

  27 Copy quote

• The trouble with life isn't that there is no answer, it's that there are so many answers.

  Ruth Benedict

  Life, Educational, Answers

  Ruth Benedict (2011). “An Anthropologist at Work”, p.126, Transaction Publishers

  30 Copy quote

• I long to speak out the intense inspiration that comes to me from the lives of strong women.

  Ruth Benedict

  Inspirational, Motivational, Strong Women

  Ruth Benedict (2011). “An Anthropologist at Work”, p.140, Transaction Publishers

  63 Copy quote

• liberty is the one thing no man can have unless he grants it to others.

  Ruth Benedict

  Freedom, Men, Liberty

  Ruth Benedict (2011). “An Anthropologist at Work”, p.398, Transaction Publishers

  27 Copy quote

• The happiest excitement in life is to be convinced that one is fighting for all one is worth on behalf of some clearly seen and deeply felt good, and against some greatly scorned evil.

  Ruth Benedict

  Fighting, Evil, Excitement

  Ruth Benedict (2011). “An Anthropologist at Work”, p.144, Transaction Publishers

  46 Copy quote

• Racism remains in the eyes of history ... merely another instance of the persecution of minorities for the advantage of those in power.

  Ruth Benedict

  Eye, Racism, Minorities

  Ruth Benedict (1945). “Race: science and politics”

  36 Copy quote

• An observer will see the bizarre developments of behavior only in alien cultures, not his own. Nevertheless this is obviously a local and temporary bias. There is no reason to suppose that any one culture has seized upon an eternal sanity and will stand in history as a solitary solution of the human problem. Even the next generation knows better. Our only scientific course is to consider our own culture, so far as we are able, as one example among innumerable others of the variant configurations of human culture.

  Ruth Benedict

  Example, Generations, Culture

  28 Copy quote

• The peoples of the earth are one family.

  Ruth Benedict

  Diversity, Brotherhood, Earth

  Ruth Benedict, Gene Weltfish (1946). “Public Affairs Pamphlet”

  8 Copy quote

• Culture is not a biologically transmitted complex

  Ruth Benedict

  Culture, Complexes

  Ruth Benedict (1973). “Patterns of Culture”, p.39, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  25 Copy quote

• Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.

  Ruth Benedict

  Racism, History, Decision

  Ruth Benedict (1945). “Race: Science and Politics”, Viking Adult

  15 Copy quote

• A man's indebtedness is not virtue; his repayment is. Virtue begins when he dedicates himself actively to the job of gratitude.

  Ruth Benedict

  Gratitude, Jobs, Men

  Ruth Benedict (2006). “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”, p.126, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  40 Copy quote

• The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community

  Ruth Benedict

  Community, Patterns, Firsts

  Patterns of Culture ch. 1 (1934)

  10 Copy quote

• Society in its full sense ... is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it. No individual can arrive even at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture in which he participates. Conversely, no civilization has in it any element which in the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual.

  Ruth Benedict

  Civilization, Society, Analysis

  Ruth Benedict (1973). “Patterns of Culture”, p.278, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

• The arrogance of race prejudice is an arrogance which defies what is scientifically known of human races.

  Ruth Benedict

  Race, Racism, Arrogance

  15 Copy quote

• Racism is the dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to congenital inferiority and another group is destined to congenital superiority.

  Ruth Benedict

  Racism, Groups, Inferiority

  Ruth Benedict (1945). “Race: science and politics”

  27 Copy quote

• The tough-minded ... respect difference. Their goal is a world made safe for differences, where the United States may be American to the hilt without threatening the peace of the world, and France may be France, and Japan may be Japan on the same conditions.

  Ruth Benedict

  Japan, Differences, Goal

  Ruth Benedict (2006). “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  19 Copy quote

• The trouble is not that we are never happy-it is that happiness is so episodical.

  Ruth Benedict

  Happiness, Trouble

  Ruth Benedict (2017). “An Anthropologist at Work”, p.122, Routledge

  27 Copy quote

• Culture, with its processes and functions, is a subject upon which we need all the enlightenment we can achieve, and there is no direction in which we can seek with greater reward than in the facts of pre-literate societies.

  Ruth Benedict

  Enlightenment, Needs, Culture

  Ruth Benedict (1973). “Patterns of Culture”, p.45, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• What really binds men together is their culture, the ideas and the standards they have in common.

  Ruth Benedict

  Men, Ideas, Together

  Ruth Benedict (1973). “Patterns of Culture”, p.41, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  13 Copy quote

• In world history, those who have helped to build the same culture are not necessarily of one race, and those of the same race have not all participated in one culture.

  Ruth Benedict

  Race, Diversity, Brotherhood

  Ruth Benedict (1945). “Race: Science and Politics”, Viking Adult

  10 Copy quote

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