But I see no reason why a woman should not grow and develop in all those outlets which are suited to her nature, it matters not at all what they may be.
AGNES SMEDLEYMuch that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
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I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
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Subjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man.
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To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty.
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It was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand it nor did I know what questions to ask.
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For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.
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There are many men – such as those often to be found among the Indians – who are refined until they have qualities often attributed to the female sex. Yet they are men, and strong ones.
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I have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman.
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I forgot the songs they sung – and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue.
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There were fifty-four women and forty little boys with the Red Army prisoners, and I went daily to take care of them also.
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I was learning that books and diagrams can be evil things if they deaden the mind of man and make him blind or cynical before subjection of any kind.
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I joined another circle and the leader gave us a little leaflet in very small print, asking us to read it carefully and then come prepared to ask questions.
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Gambling in the mark has been the great indoor sport of the capitalists for months, and consequently food has increased by 25 to 100 per cent.
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Like all my family and class, I considered it a sign of weakness to show affection; to have been caught kissing my mother would have been a disgrace, and to have shown affection for my father would have been a disaster.
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I have no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be.
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But there were years when, in search of what I thought was better, nobler things I denied these, my people, and my family.
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Yet it is awful to love a person who is a torture to you. And a fascinating person who loves you and won’t hear of anything but your loving him and living right by his side through all eternity!
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When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.
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Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.
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I was ashamed of them and their ways of life. But now – yes, I love them; they are a part of my blood; they, with all their virtues and their faults, played a great part in forming my way of looking at life.
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I believe only in money, not in love or tenderness. Love and tenderness meant only pain and suffering and defeat.
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Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
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So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital.
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But here in New York I was ignorant, insignificant, unimportant–one in millions whose destiny concerned no one. New York did not even know of my existence. Nor did it care.
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The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
AGNES SMEDLEY