“...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”

“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”

“Casting aside other things, hold to the precious few; and besides bear in mind that every man lives only the present, which is an indivisible point, and that all the rest of his life is either past or is uncertain. Brief is man's life and small the nook of the earth where he lives; brief, too, is the longest posthumous fame, buoyed only by a succession of poor human beings who will very soon die and who know little of themselves, much less of someone who died long ago.”

“But these few are the salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before exist, it is they who keep the life in those which already existed.”

“We declare our right on this earth...to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.”

“The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.”