I have no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be.
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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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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There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
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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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But settled things were enemies to me and soon lost their newness and color. The unknown called.
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My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike.
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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 loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
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It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international.
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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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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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I would not let it ruin me as it ruined others! I would speak only with money, hard money.
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I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
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Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.
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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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I forgot the songs they sung – and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue.
AGNES SMEDLEY