Quotes by Ruth Benedict

Japan likewise put her hopes of victory on a different basis from that prevalent in the United States. (...) Even when she was winning, her civilian statesmen, her High Command, and her soldiers repeated that this was no contest between armaments; it was pitting of our faith in things against their faith in spirit.

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

Faith is the sturdiest the most manly of the virtues. It lies behind our pluckiest... strivings. It is the virtue of the storm just as happiness is the virtue of the sunshine.

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?

The happiest excitement in life is to be convinced that one is fighting for all one is worth on behalf of some clearly seen and deeply felt good.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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