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 SMEDLEYI feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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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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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 have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman.
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New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.
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My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike.
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Friendship is far more human.
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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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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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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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I believe only in money, not in love or tenderness. Love and tenderness meant only pain and suffering and defeat.
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But settled things were enemies to me and soon lost their newness and color. The unknown called.
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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 loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
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It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international.
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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.
AGNES SMEDLEY