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Anthropology
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The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.
-Ruth Benedict
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Children
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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?
Journal entry, May 20, 1913 during her brief career as a boarding-school teacher
-Ruth Benedict, An Anthropologist at Work: Writings of Ruth Benedict, by Margaret Mead, 1959.
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Culture
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The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural.
-Ruth Benedict
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Debt / Borrow / Loan
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A man's indebtedness is not virtue; his repayment is. Virtue begins when he dedicates himself actively to the job of gratitude.
-Ruth Benedict
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Faith
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Our faith in the present dies out long before our faith in the future.
-Ruth Benedict
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Growth
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We grow in time to trust the future for our answers.
-Ruth Benedict, An Anthropologist at Work: Writings of Ruth Benedict, by Margaret Mead, 1959.
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Perception
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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.
-Ruth Benedict
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Racism
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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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War
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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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Books by and about Ruth Benedict