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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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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
Heels
Always
Hand
Servant
Never
Child
Satisfied
Love
Left
Busy
Hands
Lifetime
Part
Grudging
Children
Brought
Heel
Even
Waste
Wastes
Work
Watches

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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?
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We grow in time to trust the future for our answers.
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The peoples of the earth are one family.
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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.
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Culture is not a biologically transmitted complex
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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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Society in its full sense . . . is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it.
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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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Man is not committed in detail by his biological constitution to any particular variety of behavior.
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Our faith in the present dies out long before our faith in the future.
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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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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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The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.
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liberty is the one thing no man can have unless he grants it to others.
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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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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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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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... 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