To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty.
AGNES SMEDLEYThere’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
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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It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international.
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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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Always before I had felt like a person, an individual, hopeful that I could mold my life according to some desire of my own.
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No one yet knows what a man’s province is, and how far that province, as conceived of today, is artificial.
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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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When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.
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Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.
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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.
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For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.
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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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I have no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be.
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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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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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I believe only in money, not in love or tenderness. Love and tenderness meant only pain and suffering and defeat.
AGNES SMEDLEY






