Ruth Benedict Quotes
I long to speak out the intense inspiration that comes to me from the lives of strong women.
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.
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.
A man's indebtedness is not virtue; his repayment is. Virtue begins when he dedicates himself actively to the job of gratitude.
Racism remains in the eyes of history ... merely another instance of the persecution of minorities for the advantage of those in power.
The trouble with life isn't that there is no answer, it's that there are so many answers.
Racism is the dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to congenital inferiority and another group is destined to congenital superiority.
If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits
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.
The arrogance of race prejudice is an arrogance which defies what is scientifically known of human races.
What really binds men together is their culture, the ideas and the standards they have in common.
I gambled on having the strength to live two lives, one for myself and one for the world.
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.
The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community
War is, we have been forced to admit, even in the face of its huge place in our civilization, an asocial trait.
Success and failure in our own national economy will hang upon the degree to which we are able to work with races and nations whose social order and whose behavior and attitudes are strange to us.
War is an old, old plant on this earth, and a natural history of it would have to tell us under what soil conditions it grows, where it plays havoc, and how it is eliminated.
The adequate study of culture, our own and those on the opposite side of the globe, can press on to fulfillment only as we learn today from the humanities as well as from the scientists.
The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural.
Society in its full sense . . . is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it.
Man is not committed in detail by his biological constitution to any particular variety of behavior.
Traditional Anglo-Saxon intolerance is a local and temporal culture trait like any other.
In a day of footloose movements of people and of mixed marriages in the ancestry of the most desirable elements of the community we preach unabashed the gospel of the pure race.
The heavier our bodies, the higher our will, our spirit, rises above them.' 'The wearier we are, the more splendid the training.
In a world that holds books and babies and canyon trails, why should one condemn oneself to live day-in, day-out with people one does not like, and sell oneself to chaperone and correct them?
Western civilization, because of fortuitous historical circumstances, has spread itself more widely than any other local group that has so far been known.
It is strange how long we rebel against a platitude until suddenly in a different lingo it looms up again as the only verity.
It is my necessary breath of life to understand and expression is the only justification of life that I can feel without prodding.
As a matter of history great developments in art have often been remarkably separate from religious motivation and use.
... oh, I long to prove myself by writing! The best seems to die in me when I give it up. It is the self I love--not this efficient, philanthropic self.
The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community.
If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.
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.
In a world that holds books and babies and canyon trails why should one condemn oneself to live day in day out with people one does not like and sell oneself to chaperone and correct them?
Faith is the sturdiest the most manly of the virtues. It lies behind our pluckiest... strivings. It is the virtue of the storm just as happiness is the virtue of the sunshine.
