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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

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Ruth Benedict
Age: 61 †
Born: 1887
Born: June 5
Died: 1948
Died: September 17
Academic
Anthropologist
Biographer
Folklorist
Librarian
Poet
Sociologist
University Teacher
New York City
New York
Ruth Fulton Benedict
Ruth Fulton
Spread
Historical
Western
Group
Fortuitous
Civilization
Widely
Circumstances
Locals
Groups
Known
Local

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In a day of footloose movements of people and of mixed marriages in the ancestry of the most desirable elements of the community we preach unabashed the gospel of the pure race.
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The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.
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Traditional Anglo-Saxon intolerance is a local and temporal culture trait like any other.
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Society in its full sense . . . is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it.
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The trouble is not that we are never happy-it is that happiness is so episodical.
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The peoples of the earth are one family.
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Man is not committed in detail by his biological constitution to any particular variety of behavior.
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liberty is the one thing no man can have unless he grants it to others.
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Culture is not a biologically transmitted complex
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It is my necessary breath of life to understand and expression is the only justification of life that I can feel without prodding.
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We grow in time to trust the future for our answers.
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The heavier our bodies, the higher our will, our spirit, rises above them.' 'The wearier we are, the more splendid the training.
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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.
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. . . work even when I'm satisfied with it is never my child I love nor my servant I've brought to heel. It's always busy work I do with my left hand, and part of me watches grudging the wastes of a lifetime.
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Faith is the virtue of the storm, just as happiness is the virtue of sunshine.
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... oh, I long to prove myself by writing! The best seems to die in me when I give it up. It is the self I love--not this efficient, philanthropic self.
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What really binds men together is their culture, the ideas and the standards they have in common.
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The Japanese are, to the highest degree, both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigid and adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around, loyal and treacherous, brave and timid, conservative and hospitable to new ways.
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Our national experience in Americanizing millions of Europeans whose chief wish was to become Americans has been a heady wine which has made us believe, as perhaps no nation before us has ever believed, that, given the slimmest chance, all peoples will pattern themselves upon our model.
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Our faith in the present dies out long before our faith in the future.
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