Agnes Smedley Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.

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!

There's something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.