RUTH BENEDICT

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

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

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

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.

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

Culture is not a biologically transmitted complex.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

The trouble is not that we are never happy-it is that happiness is so episodical.

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?

Racism remains in the eyes of history ... merely another instance of the persecution of minorities for the advantage of those in power.

The arrogance of race prejudice is an arrogance which defies what is scientifically known of human races.

... 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.

Faith is the virtue of the storm, just as happiness is the virtue of sunshine.

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.

An observer will see the bizarre developments of behavior only in alien cultures, not his own. Nevertheless this is obviously a local and temporary bias. There is no reason to suppose that any one culture has seized upon an eternal sanity and will stand in history as a solitary solution of the human problem. Even the next generation knows better. Our only scientific course is to consider our own culture, so far as we are able, as one example among innumerable others of the variant configurations of human culture.

The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural.

So much of the trouble is because I am a woman. To me it seems a very terrible thing to be a woman. There is one crown which perhaps is worth it all--a great love, a quiet home, and children. We all know that is all that is worthwhile, and yet we must peg away, showing off our wares on the market if we have money, or manufacturing careers for ourselves if we haven't.