For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.
AGNES SMEDLEYI feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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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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So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital.
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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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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.
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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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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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Always before I had felt like a person, an individual, hopeful that I could mold my life according to some desire of my own.
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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 would not let it ruin me as it ruined others! I would speak only with money, hard money.
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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.
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New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.
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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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Subjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man.
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There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
AGNES SMEDLEY