When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.
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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To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty.
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The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
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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 feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
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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 have no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be.
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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 have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman.
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Friendship is far more human.
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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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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But settled things were enemies to me and soon lost their newness and color. The unknown called.
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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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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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So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital.
AGNES SMEDLEY