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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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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I believe only in money, not in love or tenderness. Love and tenderness meant only pain and suffering and defeat.
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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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There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
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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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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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It was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand it nor did I know what questions to ask.
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Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man.
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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 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 shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.
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Friendship is far more human.
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New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.
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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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Gambling in the mark has been the great indoor sport of the capitalists for months, and consequently food has increased by 25 to 100 per cent.
AGNES SMEDLEY