I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
AGNES SMEDLEYEverybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.
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The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
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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.
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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 settled things were enemies to me and soon lost their newness and color. The unknown called.
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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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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.
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To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty.
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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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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 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.
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It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international.
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The highest joy is to fight by the side of those who for any reason of their own making or ours, are unable to develop to full human stature.
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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.
AGNES SMEDLEY






