There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
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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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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Yet it is awful to love a person who is a torture to you. And a fascinating person who loves you and won’t hear of anything but your loving him and living right by his side through all eternity!
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I have no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be.
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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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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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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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
It was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand it nor did I know what questions to ask.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
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.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
Subjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man.
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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.
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.
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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 feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
AGNES SMEDLEY