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.
AGNES SMEDLEYIt was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand it nor did I know what questions to ask.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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She said little, especially when my father or the men who worked for him were about I remember her instinctive and unhesitating sympathy for the miners.
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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 have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman.
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Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.
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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 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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When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.
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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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It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international.
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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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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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I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.
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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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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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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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The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
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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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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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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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My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike.
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Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.
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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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I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
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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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There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
AGNES SMEDLEY