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Ruth Benedict

Ruth Benedict Quotes

Anthropologist

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Famous Ruth Benedict Quotes

“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.”

WarSpiritFaithUnited StatesVictoryJapanMaterialism
Book:Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture
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“[T]he institution that human cultures build up upon the hints presented by the environment or by man's physical necessities do not keep as close to the original impulse as we easily imagine. These hints are, in reality, mere rough sketches, a list of bare facts. [...] Warfare is not the expression of the instinct of pugnacity. Man's pugnacity is so small a hint in the human equipment that it may not be given any expression in inter-tribal relation. [...] Pugnacity is no more than the touch to the ball of custom, a touch also that may be withheld.”

WarCulturePsychologyInstinctImpulseWarfareCustomHuman InstinctEvo Psych Is Wrong
Book:PATTERNS OF CULTURE
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