Extended excerpt [Essay]:

“There is solid reason, therefore, in the history of human societies, for the opposition of the democracies to the spread of the Nazi state and of Nazi ideology. But this solid reason is grounded on the social utility of civil liberties, the liberties which can be made common property. Civil liberties in all human societies have always paid their way; they have given advantages to all citizens and all tribesmen. Special privileges, arbitrary power, on the other hand, are boomerangs which return to strike those who wield them, and they bring conflict and often terror into the whole society. Therefore, we in America are willing to pay enormous prices lest liberty be lost on our continent. The only argument is how best to keep ourselves strong and uncontaminated. For this great end we must be clear in our minds that the way to keep ourselves from the taint of our enemies is through the defense of civil liberties. We must be sure that we do not curtail them in the fields already allowed, and we must extend them to other fields not now recognized. For Liberty is the one thing no man can have unless he grants it to others.” (p. 756)

Source note: Benedict’s essay was later included in An Anthropologist at Work: Writings of Ruth Benedict (1959), a collection of Benedict’s work edited by her close friend Margaret Mead. (“Primitive Freedom” begins on p. 396, the cited text can be found at the bottom of p. 398 – First edition, Boston: Houghton Mifflin) 

Source: Library – The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 169 (1942) International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) 0276-9077

Extended excerpt [Essay]:

“There is solid reason, therefore, in the history of human societies, for the opposition of the democracies to the spread of the Nazi state and of Nazi ideology. But this solid reason is grounded on the social utility of civil liberties, the liberties which can be made common property. Civil liberties in all human societies have always paid their way; they have given advantages to all citizens and all tribesmen. Special privileges, arbitrary power, on the other hand, are boomerangs which return to strike those who wield them, and they bring conflict and often terror into the whole society. Therefore, we in America are willing to pay enormous prices lest liberty be lost on our continent. The only argument is how best to keep ourselves strong and uncontaminated. For this great end we must be clear in our minds that the way to keep ourselves from the taint of our enemies is through the defense of civil liberties. We must be sure that we do not curtail them in the fields already allowed, and we must extend them to other fields not now recognized. For Liberty is the one thing no man can have unless he grants it to others.” (p. 756)

Source: Library – The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 169 (1942) International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) 0276-9077

Extended excerpt [Journal entry]:

“The happiest excitement in life is to be convinced that one is fighting for all one is worth on behalf of some clearly seen and deeply felt good, and against some greatly scorned evil…The exhilarating sense of conflict and of rest from conflict which together make up the meaning of life, no longer universally possible on the plane of instinct, have largely come to exist in the more contagious, more gregarious, more interdependent world of the intelligence.” (p.144)

Source: Library – An Anthropologist at Work: Writings of Ruth Benedict (1959) Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) No. 867270999

Extended excerpt [Journal entry]:

“The trouble with life isn’t that there is no answer, it’s that there are so many answers. There’s the answer of Christ and of Buddha, of Thomas à Kempis and of Elbert Hubbard, of Browing, Keats and of Spinoz, of Thoreau and of Walt Whitman, of Kant and of Theodore Roosevelt. By turns their answers fit my needs. And yet, because I am I and not any one of them, they can none of them be completely mine.” (p. 126)

Source: Library – An Anthropologist at Work: Writings of Ruth Benedict (1959) Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) No. 867270999