“There are two kinds of opportunities: one which we chance upon, the other which we create.” — Ruth Benedict Chance 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 Circumstances 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 Dies 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
What really binds men together is their culture, the ideas and the standards they have in common. — Ruth Benedict Common 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
I long to speak out the intense inspiration that comes to me from the lives of strong women. — Ruth Benedict Feminism Copy Share Image
Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the… — Ruth Benedict Decision Copy Share Image
In a day of footloose movements of people and of mixed marriages in the ancestry of the most desirable elements of the… — Ruth Benedict Ancestry 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 Busy 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 Conditions 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
No one culture has ever developed all human potentialities; it has always selected certain capacities, mental and emotional and moral, and stifled… — Ruth Benedict Capacity 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
War is an old, old plant on this earth, and a natural history of it would have to tell us under what… — Ruth Benedict Conditions 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 Born 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 Able 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
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
The trouble is not that we are never happy - it is that happiness is so episodical — Ruth Benedict Happiness 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 Accepting Copy Share Image
