Ruth Benedict Quotes

There is no fundamental difference in the ways of thinking of primitive and civilized man. A close connection between race and personality has never been established.

Every country is different, every league is different - all the culture.

I discovered that the people of the North are different and there's no way you can make a person from the North similar to a Southerner. They're two different worlds.

The broadest pattern of history - namely, the differences between human societies on different continents - seems to me to be attributable to differences among continental environments, and not to biological differences among peoples themselves.

The human animal varies from class to class, culture to culture. In one way we are consistent: We are irrational.

Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence.

Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.

I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time, they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching that still.

As a social anthropologist, I naturally accept and even stress the fact that there are major differences, both mental and psychological, which separate the different races of mankind. Indeed, I would be inclined to suggest that however great may be the physical differences between such races as the European and the Negro, the mental and psychological differences are greater still.

Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society

I'm not trying to represent the whole Latino community. There are too many different cultures, and Latinos will always say, 'My family doesn't do that.'

Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.

Life in the Middle East is quite different from other places.

Anthropology is the science which tells us that people are the same the whole world over - except when they are different.

The moral and intellectual character of the Africans is widely different in different nations.

I would love to study cultures and people.

Thus the races, though alike in their physical response to climate, may possibly be different in their mental response because they have approached America by different paths.

Americans are as they are. We have to accept this. Lots of Europeans forget that.

There is endless variety in the details of the customs and laws which prevail of the world at large.

To try and to pretend that there's no difference between where we come from is so dumb.

I never thought fashion was the job for me, because I'm Japanese. Clothes! That was a European, society thing.

American and French culture are really, really different, but in a way it's funny.

Culture is an output of a bunch of inputs that have to come together the right way. Specifically, it is the collision of people and their context, how they interact with each other in that context, and then how that context evolves based on those interactions as they multiply.

Each time I go to a place I have not seen before I hope it will be as different as possible from the places I already know. I assume it is natural for a traveler to seek diversity, and that it is the human element that makes him most aware of difference. If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another.

History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves