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.
AGNES SMEDLEYProfessors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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Subjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
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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 -
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 -
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 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 have no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be.
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 -
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 -
The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.
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 -
There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
AGNES SMEDLEY






