Agnes Smedley Quotes

• Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.

  Agnes Smedley

  Russia, Spy, Safe

  48 Copy quote

• I have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman. Friendship is far more human.

  Agnes Smedley

  Sex, Men, Belief

  Agnes Smedley (1975). “Battle Hymn of China”

  8 Copy quote

• To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty.

  Agnes Smedley

  Beauty, Beautiful, Sake

  Agnes Smedley (2012). “Daughter of Earth”, p.8, Courier Corporation

  9 Copy quote

• Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man. I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.

  Agnes Smedley

  Girl, Fighting, Boys

  16 Copy quote

• But settled things were enemies to me and soon lost their newness and color. The unknown called.

  Agnes Smedley

  Adventure, Color, Enemy

  Agnes Smedley (2012). “Daughter of Earth”, p.123, Courier Corporation

  7 Copy quote

• I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.

  Agnes Smedley

  Bitterness, Bitter, Hours

  Agnes Smedley (2012). “Daughter of Earth”, p.7, Courier Corporation

  8 Copy quote

• But there were years when, in search of what I thought was better, nobler things I denied these, my people, and my family. I forgot the songs they sung - and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue; I was ashamed of them and their ways of life. But now - yes, I love them; they are a part of my blood; they, with all their virtues and their faults, played a great part in forming my way of looking at life.

  Agnes Smedley

  Family, Song, Years

  7 Copy quote

• I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.

  Agnes Smedley

  Volcanoes, Feels, Living On

  15 Copy quote

• There's something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.

  Agnes Smedley

  Death, Dying

  Agnes Smedley (1975). “Battle Hymn of China”

  7 Copy quote

• 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 Smedley

  Family, Fathers Day, Mother

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Strong, Sex, Men

  6 Copy quote

• Subjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man ... 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

  Fighting, Men, Joy

  Agnes Smedley (2012). “Daughter of Earth”, p.279, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

• No one yet knows what a man's province is, and how far that province, as conceived of today, is artificial.

  Agnes Smedley

  Men, Today, Artificial

  6 Copy quote

• I have no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be.

  Agnes Smedley

  Men, May, Masculine

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Agnes Smedley

  Respect, Winning, Men

  8 Copy quote

• So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital. There were fifty-four women and forty little boys with the Red Army prisoners, and I went daily to take care of them also.

  Agnes Smedley

  Army, Boys, Men

  16 Copy quote

• When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.

  Agnes Smedley

  Girl, Law, West

  6 Copy quote

• I believe only in money, not in love or tenderness. Love and tenderness meant only pain and suffering and defeat. I would not let it ruin me as it ruined others! I would speak only with money, hard money.

  Agnes Smedley

  Money, Pain, Believe

  7 Copy quote

• My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike. 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

  Sympathy, Mother, Father

  Agnes Smedley (2012). “Daughter of Earth”, p.119, Courier Corporation

  8 Copy quote

• 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!

  Agnes Smedley

  Love You, Living Right, Awful

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  May, Matter, Reason Why

  4 Copy quote

• For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.

  Agnes Smedley

  Events, Firsts, Week

  4 Copy quote

• More and more do I see that only a successful revolution in India can break England's back forever and free Europe itself. It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international.

  Agnes Smedley

  Successful, Europe, Forever

  4 Copy quote

• Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.... 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

  Education, Book, Men

  Agnes Smedley (2012). “Daughter of Earth”, p.262, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

• New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.... Always before I had felt like a person, an individual, hopeful that I could mold my life according to some desire of my own. 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 Smedley

  New York, Destiny, Hopeful

  Agnes Smedley (2011). “Daughter of Earth”, p.234, Courier Corporation

  7 Copy quote

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