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.
AGNES SMEDLEYNow, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
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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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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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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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
No one yet knows what a man’s province is, and how far that province, as conceived of today, is artificial.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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 SMEDLEY -
I would not let it ruin me as it ruined others! I would speak only with money, hard money.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.
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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 was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand it nor did I know what questions to ask.
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The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
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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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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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I have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman.
AGNES SMEDLEY






