Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.
AGNES SMEDLEYI shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
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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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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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I have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman.
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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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For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.
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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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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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Friendship is far more human.
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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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To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty.
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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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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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There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
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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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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.
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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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I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
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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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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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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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My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike.
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New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.
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I forgot the songs they sung – and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.
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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.
AGNES SMEDLEY