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Ruth Benedict Quotes

Anthropologist

American anthropologist known for her contributions to cultural anthropology and social anthropology. Benedict focused on the differences between cultures and how these differences affect human behavior and social structures.

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Famous Ruth Benedict Quotes

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

Humans Race Known Racism Prejudice Human Race Arrogance

Author:Ruth Benedict

“No one culture has ever developed all human potentialities; it has always selected certain capacities, mental and emotional and moral, and stifled others. Each culture is a system of values which may well complement the values in another.”

Humans Wells May Certain Values Culture Moral Emotional Capacity Selected Complement Human Potential

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.”

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

World Humans Different Science Purpose Humanity Differences Safe Safety Anthropology Anthropologists

Author:Ruth Benedict

“We must accept all the implications of our human inheritance, one of the most important of which is the small scope of biologically transmitted behavior, and the enormous role of the cultural process of the transmission of tradition.”

Humans Important Process Accepting Roles Behavior Tradition Enormous Scope Inheritance Implications Transmission

Author:Ruth Benedict

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

Humans Culture Differences Human Beings Crucial Human Society

Author:Ruth Benedict

About the Author

Born: June 5, 1887
Died: September 17, 1948
Known for: Anthropologist
Quotes: 66

Books & Sources

An Anthropologist at WorkRelated source material

PATTERNS OF CULTURERelated source material

Race: Science and PoliticsRelated source material

The Chrysanthemum and the SwordRelated source material

The chrysanthemum and the sword: patterns of Japanese cultureRelated source material

Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese CultureRelated source material

Public Affairs PamphletRelated source material

Scientific PapersRelated source material

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