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 SMEDLEYFor the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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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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Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.
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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.
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I have no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be.
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I have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman.
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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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To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty.
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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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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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My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike.
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She said little, especially when my father or the men who worked for him were about I remember her instinctive and unhesitating sympathy for the miners.
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There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
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It was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand it nor did I know what questions to ask.
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It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international.
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When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.
AGNES SMEDLEY






