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 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
