The prime lesson the social sciences can learn from the natural sciences is just this: that it is necessary to press on to find the positive conditions under which desired events take place, and that these can be just as scientifically investigated as can instances of negative correlation. This problem is beyond relativity.
Ruth BenedictNo man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking.
Ruth BenedictThe adequate study of culture, our own and those on the opposite side of the globe, can press on to fulfillment only as we learn today from the humanities as well as from the scientists.
Ruth BenedictSociety in its full sense . . . is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it.
Ruth Benedict... oh, I long to prove myself by writing! The best seems to die in me when I give it up. It is the self I love--not this efficient, philanthropic self.
Ruth BenedictMost people are shaped to the form of their culture because of the enormous malleability of their original endowment. They are plastic to the moulding force of the society into which they are born. It does not matter whether, with the Northwest Coast, it requires delusions of self-reference, or with our own civilization the amassing of possessions. In any case the great mass of individuals take quite readily the form that is presented to them.
Ruth Benedict