Quotes from Ruth Benedict

Man is not committed in detail by his biological constitution to any particular variety of behavior.

Racism is the dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to congenital inferiority and another group is destined to congenital superiority.

The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.

Racism remains in the eyes of history ... merely another instance of the persecution of minorities for the advantage of those in power.

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.

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 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.

Culture is not a biologically transmitted complex.

I have always used the world of make-believe with a certain desperation.

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.

Society in its full sense . . . is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it.

The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.

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 trouble with life isn't that there is no answer, but that there are so many answers

Experience, contrary to common belief, is mostly imagination.

There are two kinds of opportunities: one which we chance upon, the other which we create.

I have always used the world of make-believe with a certain desperation.

Japan likewise put her hopes of victory on a different basis from that prevalent in the United States. (...) Even when she was winning, her civilian statesmen, her High Command, and her soldiers repeated that this was no contest between armaments; it was pitting of our faith in things against their faith in spirit.

The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accomodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior.

If we are interested in cultural processes, the only way in which we can know the significance of the selected detail of behaviour is against the background of the motives and emotions and values that are institutionalized in that culture.

The trouble with life isn't that there is no answer, it's that there are so many answers.

We do not see the lens through which we look.

the Japanese love the theme. They play up suicide as Americans play up crime and they have the same vicarious enjoyment of it. They choose to dwell on events of self-destruction instead of on destruction of others.