Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.
AGNES SMEDLEYI have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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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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I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
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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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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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There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
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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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Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.
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I have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman.
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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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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.
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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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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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Subjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man.
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I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY






