Thousands of women are crushed and made inarticulate by that system and never develop as their natures would force them to develop were they in a decent environment.
AGNES SMEDLEYYet 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!
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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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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The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
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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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The highest joy is to fight by the side of those who for any reason of their own making or ours, are unable to develop to full human stature.
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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.
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More and more do I see that only a successful revolution in India can break England’s back forever and free Europe itself.
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In the little hall leading to it was a rack holding various Socialist or radical newspapers, tracts, and pamphlets in very small print and on very bad paper.
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Always before I had felt like a person, an individual, hopeful that I could mold my life according to some desire of my own.
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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 shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.
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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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So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital.
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My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike.
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New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.
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Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.
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I would not let it ruin me as it ruined others! I would speak only with money, hard money.
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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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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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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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And the woman who could win the respect of man was often the woman who could knock him down with her bare fists and sit on him until he yelled for help.
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Friendship is far more human.
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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 loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
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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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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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I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
AGNES SMEDLEY