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.… — 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 and temporary… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share
In world history, those who have helped to build the same culture are not necessarily of one race, and those of the same race… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share
It is strange how long we rebel against a platitude until suddenly in a different lingo it looms up again as the only verity. — Ruth Benedict Copy Share
I gambled on having the strength to live two lives, one for myself and one for the world. — Ruth Benedict Copy Share
Western civilization, because of fortuitous historical circumstances, has spread itself more widely than any other local group that has so far been known. — Ruth Benedict Copy Share
The trouble is not that we are never happy - it is that happiness is so episodical — Ruth Benedict Copy Share
It is my necessary breath of life to understand and expression is the only justification of life that I can feel without prodding. — Ruth Benedict Copy Share
The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences. — Ruth Benedict Copy Share
Success and failure in our own national economy will hang upon the degree to which we are able to work with races and nations… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share
As a matter of history great developments in art have often been remarkably separate from religious motivation and use. — Ruth Benedict Copy Share
The Japanese are, to the highest degree, both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigid and adaptable, submissive and… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share
Society in its full sense ... is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it. No individual can arrive even at the… — Ruth Benedict Copy Share
