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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
Historical
Western
Group
Civilization
Fortuitous
Circumstances
Widely
Groups
Locals
Known
Local
Spread

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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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Our faith in the present dies out long before our faith in the future.
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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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Culture is not a biologically transmitted complex
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We grow in time to trust the future for our answers.
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Man is not committed in detail by his biological constitution to any particular variety of behavior.
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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 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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... it is a commonplace that men like war. For peace, in our society, with the feeling we have then that it is feeble-minded to strive except for one's own private profit, is a lonely thing and a hazardous business. Over and over men have proved that they prefer the hazards of war with all its suffering. It has its compensations.
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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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. . . 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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I gambled on having the strength to live two lives, one for myself and one for the world.
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liberty is the one thing no man can have unless he grants it to others.
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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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Society in its full sense ... is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it. No individual can arrive even at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture in which he participates. Conversely, no civilization has in it any element which in the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual.
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Faith is the virtue of the storm, just as happiness is the virtue of sunshine.
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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.
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The peoples of the earth are one family.
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If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits
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Traditional Anglo-Saxon intolerance is a local and temporal culture trait like any other.
Ruth Benedict