“The life-history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.” FirstsLittlesMomentsAbleCultureIndividualBeliefBornCommunityBirthHabitActivityShapesCreaturesBehaviorStandardsPatternsCustomsImpossibilityAccommodations Author:Ruth Benedict
“The mere fact of leaving ultimate social control in the hands of the people has not guaranteed that men will be able to conduct their lives as free men. Those societies where men know they are free are often democracies, but sometimes they have strong chiefs and kings.they have, however, one common characteristic: they are all alike in making certain freedoms common to all citizens, and inalienable.” PeopleKnowsMenSometimesFactsHandsAbleCertainStrongSocialFreedomCommonDemocracyKingsCitizensUltimateMereLeavingChiefsCharacteristicsMonarchyFree ManSocial Control Book:An Anthropologist at Work Source: An Anthropologist at Work
“Success and failure in our own national economy will hang upon the degree to which we are able to work with races and nations whose social order and whose behavior and attitudes are strange to us.” AbleSuccessOrderNationsSocialRaceAttitudeEconomyStrangeDegreesBehaviorDiversitySuccess And FailureSocial OrderCultural DiversityNational EconomyBehavior And Attitude Book:An Anthropologist at Work Source: An Anthropologist at Work
“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.” KnowsHumansReasonProblemAbleCultureCoursesNextGenerationsExampleDevelopmentBehaviorEternalSolutionsLocalsAliensNo ReasonTemporarySanitySolitaryBiasNeverthelessBizarreObserversNext GenerationConfigurationHuman Problems Author:Ruth Benedict
