Ruth Benedict

Ruth Fulton Benedict (June 5, 1887 – September 17, 1948) was an American anthropologist and folklorist.

Ruth Benedict (1937)

Quotes

• From the moment of his birth the customs into which [an individual] is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture.
  • Pattern of Culture [1934], ch. 1

• 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.
  • Pattern of Culture, ch. 2

• Our children are not individuals whose rights and tastes are casually respected from infancy, as they are in some primitive societies . . . . They are fundamentally extension of our own egos and give a special opportunity for the display of authority.
  • Patterns of Culture, 7

• 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. In scientific language, culture is not a function of race.
  • Race: Science and Politics [1940], ch. 2

• Racism is the dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to congenital inferiority and another group is destined to congenitial superiority.
  • Race: Science and Politics, 7

• The tough-minded are content that differences should exist. They respect differences. Their goal is a world made safe for differences, where the United States may be American to the hilt without threatening the peace of the world, and France may be France, and Japan may be Japan on the same conditions.
  • The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture [1967], p. 15.