It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international.
AGNES SMEDLEYSubjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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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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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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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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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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Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.
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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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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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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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When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.
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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 shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.
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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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Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man.
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There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
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No one yet knows what a man’s province is, and how far that province, as conceived of today, is artificial.
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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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For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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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I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
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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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Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
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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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It was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand it nor did I know what questions to ask.
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Friendship is far more human.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
AGNES SMEDLEY