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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.

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
Lasts
Element
Separable
Last
Contribution
Participates
Individual
Analysis
Potentialities
Culture
Individuals
Conversely
Sense
Elements
Compose
Without
Civilization
Threshold
Even
Full
Arrive
Never
Society
Entity

More quotes by Ruth Benedict

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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.
Ruth Benedict
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Culture is not a biologically transmitted complex
Ruth Benedict
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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.
Ruth Benedict
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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.
Ruth Benedict
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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.
Ruth Benedict
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In a world that holds books and babies and canyon trails, why should one condemn oneself to live day-in, day-out with people one does not like, and sell oneself to chaperone and correct them?
Ruth Benedict
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Man is not committed in detail by his biological constitution to any particular variety of behavior.
Ruth Benedict
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The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.
Ruth Benedict
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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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The peoples of the earth are one family.
Ruth Benedict
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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.
Ruth Benedict
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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.
Ruth Benedict
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What really binds men together is their culture, the ideas and the standards they have in common.
Ruth Benedict
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Traditional Anglo-Saxon intolerance is a local and temporal culture trait like any other.
Ruth Benedict
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Faith is the virtue of the storm, just as happiness is the virtue of sunshine.
Ruth Benedict
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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
Ruth Benedict
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We grow in time to trust the future for our answers.
Ruth Benedict
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liberty is the one thing no man can have unless he grants it to others.
Ruth Benedict
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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.
Ruth Benedict
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The trouble is not that we are never happy-it is that happiness is so episodical.
Ruth Benedict