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Children
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In a world that holds books and babies and canyon trails, why should one condemn oneself to live day-in, day-out with people one does not like, and sell oneself to chaperone and correct them?
[Journal entry, May 20, 1913 during her brief career as a boarding-school teacher]
-Ruth Benedict, "An Anthropologist at Work: Writings of Ruth Benedict," by Margaret Mead, 1959.
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Photography
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The most refined skills of color printing, the intricate techniques of wide-angle photography, provide us pictures of trivia bigger and more real than life. We forget that we see trivia and notice only that the reproduction is so good. Man fulfils his dream and by photographic magic produces a precise image of the Grand Canyon. The result is not that he adores nature or beauty the more. Instead he adores his camera—and himself.
-Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image, ch. 4 (1961)
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Racism
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Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.
-Ruth Benedict
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Perception
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No 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 Benedict
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Faith
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Our faith in the present dies out long before our faith in the future.
-Ruth Benedict
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Growth
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We grow in time to trust the future for our answers.
-Ruth Benedict, "An Anthropologist at Work: Writings of Ruth Benedict," by Margaret Mead, 1959.
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Life
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You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the magic tissue of the universe of your life. No one can take it from you. No one receives either more or less than you receive. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will, and the supply will never be withheld from you. Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get into debt. You can only waste the passing movements. You cannot waste tomorrow. It is kept for you.
-Arnold Bennett
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Age
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You have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.
-James Barrie
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Pessimism
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Pessimism, when you get used to it, is just as agreeable as optimism.
-Arnold Bennett
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Goals
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Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.
-Arnold Bennett
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