liberty is the one thing no man can have unless he grants it to others. — Ruth Benedict Freedom Copy Share Image
Virtue begins when we dedicate ourselves actively to the job of gratitude. — Ruth Benedict Character Copy Share Image
The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences. — Ruth Benedict Anthropology Copy Share Image
Our faith in the present dies out long before our faith in the future. — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
I long to speak out the intense inspiration that comes to me from the lives of strong women. — Ruth Benedict Feminism Copy Share Image
The arrogance of race prejudice is an arrogance which defies what is scientifically known of human races. — Ruth Benedict Arrogance Copy Share Image
The trouble is not that we are never happy - it is that happiness is so episodical — Ruth Benedict Happiness Copy Share Image
War is, we have been forced to admit, even in the face of its huge place in our civilization, an asocial trait. — Ruth Benedict Civilization Copy Share Image
“There are two kinds of opportunities: one which we chance upon, the other which we create.” — Ruth Benedict Chance Copy Share Image
What really binds men together is their culture, the ideas and the standards they have in common. — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
Man is not committed in detail by his biological constitution to any particular variety of behavior. — Ruth Benedict Behavior Copy Share Image
No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions… — Ruth Benedict Thinking Copy Share Image
No one culture has ever developed all human potentialities; it has always selected certain capacities, mental and emotional and moral, and stifled… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
Our national experience in Americanizing millions of Europeans whose chief wish was to become Americans has been a heady wine which has… — Ruth Benedict Assimilation Copy Share Image
We must accept all the implications of our human inheritance, one of the most important of which is the small scope of… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
War is an old, old plant on this earth, and a natural history of it would have to tell us under what… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
. . . work even when I'm satisfied with it is never my child I love nor my servant I've brought to… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
“Japan likewise put her hopes of victory on a different basis from that prevalent in the United States. (...) Even when she… — Ruth Benedict Faith Copy Share Image
The tough-minded ... respect difference. Their goal is a world made safe for differences, where the United States may be American to… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
The Japanese are, to the highest degree, both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigid and adaptable,… — Ruth Benedict Adaptable Copy Share Image
Most people are shaped to the form of their culture because of the enormous malleability of their original endowment. They are plastic… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
So much of the trouble is because I am a woman. To me it seems a very terrible thing to be a… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
... with every Asiatic country where we operate in cooperation with the existing culture, the need for intelligent understanding of that country… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
The psychological consequences of this spread of white culture have been out of all proportion to the materialistic. This world-wide cultural diffusion… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
The prime lesson the social sciences can learn from the natural sciences is just this: that it is necessary to press on… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
An observer will see the bizarre developments of behavior only in alien cultures, not his own. Nevertheless this is obviously a local… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
The mere fact of leaving ultimate social control in the hands of the people has not guaranteed that men will be able… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
I have always used the world of make-believe with a certain desperation. — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
“Experience, contrary to common belief, is mostly imagination.” — Ruth Benedict Belief Copy Share Image
I gambled on having the strength to live two lives, one for myself and one for the world. — Ruth Benedict Gamer Copy Share Image
Western civilization, because of fortuitous historical circumstances, has spread itself more widely than any other local group that has so far been… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
... oh, I long to prove myself by writing! The best seems to die in me when I give it up. It… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
Racism is the dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to congenital inferiority and another group is destined to congenital… — Ruth Benedict Destined Copy Share Image
“The trouble with life isn't that there is no answer, but that there are so many answers” — Ruth Benedict Copy Share Image
