But there were years when, in search of what I thought was better, nobler things I denied these, my people, and my family.
AGNES SMEDLEYEverybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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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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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 SMEDLEY -
I would not let it ruin me as it ruined others! I would speak only with money, hard money.
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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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Friendship is far more human.
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But settled things were enemies to me and soon lost their newness and color. The unknown called.
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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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I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.
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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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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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The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
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New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.
AGNES SMEDLEY