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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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Agnes Smedley
Age: 58 †
Born: 1892
Born: February 23
Died: 1950
Died: May 6
Feminist
Journalist
Writer
Osgood
Missouri
Make
Silence
Diagrams
Things
Learning
Academia
Education
Subjection
Men
Books
Professors
Evil
Maps
Book
Cynical
Kind
Blind
Mind
Figures
Deaden

More quotes by Agnes Smedley

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I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
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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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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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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.
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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.
Agnes Smedley
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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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There's something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.
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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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To die would have been beautiful. But I belong to those who do not die for the sake of beauty.
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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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Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.
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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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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
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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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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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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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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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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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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. The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
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