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.
AGNES SMEDLEYLike 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.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
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I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
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 -
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
I have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
I forgot the songs they sung – and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue.
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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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I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
Always before I had felt like a person, an individual, hopeful that I could mold my life according to some desire of my own.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
But settled things were enemies to me and soon lost their newness and color. The unknown called.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
There were fifty-four women and forty little boys with the Red Army prisoners, and I went daily to take care of them also.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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!
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 -
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man.
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
It was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand it nor did I know what questions to ask.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
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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.
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