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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. I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.

Agnes Smedley

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Agnes Smedley
Age: 58 †
Born: 1892
Born: February 23
Died: 1950
Died: May 6
Feminist
Journalist
Writer
Osgood
Missouri
Strength
Jumped
Boys
Fights
Fighting
Ashamed
Girl
Shot
Part
Shots
Body
Lack
Men
Tried
Took
Rode

More quotes by Agnes Smedley

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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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For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.
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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.
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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. It is not a national question concerning India any longer it is purely international.
Agnes Smedley
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To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty.
Agnes Smedley
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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.
Agnes Smedley
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When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.
Agnes Smedley
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Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.
Agnes Smedley
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I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
Agnes Smedley
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I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
Agnes Smedley
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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!
Agnes Smedley
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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.
Agnes Smedley
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I joined another circle and the leader gave us a little leaflet in very small print, asking us to read it carefully and then come prepared to ask questions. It was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand it nor did I know what questions to ask.
Agnes Smedley
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I have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman. Friendship is far more human.
Agnes Smedley
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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
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Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.
Agnes Smedley
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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
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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
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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.
Agnes Smedley
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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