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 SMEDLEYThere were fifty-four women and forty little boys with the Red Army prisoners, and I went daily to take care of them also.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.
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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 -
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 -
I would not let it ruin me as it ruined others! I would speak only with money, hard money.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
I have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
But there were years when, in search of what I thought was better, nobler things I denied these, my people, and my family.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
I forgot the songs they sung – and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue.
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 -
I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital.
AGNES SMEDLEY