Ruth Benedict Quotes

• We grow in time to trust the future for our answers.

  Ruth Benedict

  Topics in Future, Trust

• The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.

  Ruth Benedict

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Human, Safe

• The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community.

  Ruth Benedict

  Topics in History, Uncategorized

  Tags in Individual

• The adequate study of culture, our own and those on the opposite side of the globe, can press on to fulfillment only as we learn today from the humanities as well as from the scientists.

  Ruth Benedict

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Study, Learn

• 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

  Topics in Future

  Tags in Must

• Our faith in the present dies out long before our faith in the future.

  Ruth Benedict

  Topics in Future

  Tags in Long

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Ever, Thinking

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Find, War

• I long to speak out the intense inspiration that comes to me from the lives of strong women.

  Ruth Benedict

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Women, Strong

• I haven’t strength of mind not to need a career.

  Ruth Benedict

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Strength, Mind

• I have always used the world of make-believe with a certain desperation.

  Ruth Benedict

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Used, Certain

• I gambled on having the strength to live two lives, one for myself and one for the world.

  Ruth Benedict

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Myself, Strength, Live

• Culture is not a biologically transmitted complex.

  Ruth Benedict

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Culture, Complex

• A man’s indebtedness is not virtue; his repayment is. Virtue begins when he dedicates himself actively to the job of gratitude.

  Ruth Benedict

  Topics in Job

  Tags in Gratitude

• The trouble with life isn’t that there is no answer, it’s that there are so many answers.

  Ruth Benedict

  Topics in Life

• In world history, those who have helped to build the same culture are not necessarily of one race, and those of the same race have not all participated in one culture.

  Ruth Benedict

  Topics in Racism

Ruth Benedict (16)

Birth:	5th June, 1887
Death:	17th September, 1948
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Anthropologist, Folklorist

About

Ruth Benedict was an American anthropologist and folklorist. She was born in New York City, and attended Vassar College and was graduated in 1909. She entered graduate studies at Columbia University in 1919, studying under Franz Boas, receiving her Ph.D and joining the faculty in 1923.

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