Quotes from Agnes Smedley

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I am become a hard, thankless, graceless girl, and it was the only way I could do it.

I have no country...my countrymen are the men and women who work against oppression- it does not matter where they are. With them I feel at home- we understand each other. Others are foreign to me." -Agnes Smedley in Daughter of Earth

we live this one brief and precious hour called Life; ...it is not in keeping with the nobility of existence to keep other human being in subjection..." -Agnes Smedley in Daughter of Earth

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

For months it seemed that a revolution was certain. But instead, slavery seems more likely now. The working class no longer has the physical resistance for a revolution, and the Entente is too strong, and Russia is too weak.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

But he like my mother, had certainly come to know that those who work the most do not make the most money. It was the fault of the rich, it seemed, but just how he did not know.

What a couple. I'm consumed into ashes. And he's always raking up the ashes and setting them on fire again.

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.

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.

In one hotel, the maid who built the fire fainted in our room. Exhaustion was the cause. We talked with her later and learned that she worked 17 hours a day and makes 95 marks a month - about 50 cents.

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