The trouble with life isn’t that there is no answer, it’s that there are so many answers.
– Ruth Benedict
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
I long to speak out the intense inspiration that comes to me from the lives of strong women.
– Ruth Benedict
A man’s indebtedness is not virtue; his repayment is. Virtue begins when he dedicates himself
actively to the job of gratitude.
– Ruth Benedict
The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.
– Ruth Benedict
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
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
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
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