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.
Ruth BenedictWestern civilization, because of fortuitous historical circumstances, has spread itself more widely than any other local group that has so far been known.
Ruth BenedictIf 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
Ruth BenedictSociety in its full sense . . . is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it.
Ruth BenedictTraditional Anglo-Saxon intolerance is a local and temporal culture trait like any other.
Ruth Benedict... it is a commonplace that men like war. For peace, in our society, with the feeling we have then that it is feeble-minded to strive except for one's own private profit, is a lonely thing and a hazardous business. Over and over men have proved that they prefer the hazards of war with all its suffering. It has its compensations.
Ruth Benedict