To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty.
AGNES SMEDLEYAlways before I had felt like a person, an individual, hopeful that I could mold my life according to some desire of my own.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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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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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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Subjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man.
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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.
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 -
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 -
New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.
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.
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The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
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 -
Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.
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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 no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
I believe only in money, not in love or tenderness. Love and tenderness meant only pain and suffering and defeat.
AGNES SMEDLEY