For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.
AGNES SMEDLEYMore and more do I see that only a successful revolution in India can break England’s back forever and free Europe itself.
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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My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike.
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New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.
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So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital.
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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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I forgot the songs they sung – and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue.
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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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I would not let it ruin me as it ruined others! I would speak only with money, hard money.
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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.
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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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The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
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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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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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Friendship is far more human.
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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.
AGNES SMEDLEY