Ai Weiwei Quotes

We see plenty of artistic work that reflects superficial social conditions, but very little work that questions fundamental values.

Ai Weiwei

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Quotes to Explore

• When I started out back in Louisville, there was Harry Collins. He was my first teacher. He saw that I was so obsessed with magic that he taught me the love of magic.

  

  Lance Burton
  • Love
  • Teacher
  • Magic

• I identified in a very deep way with the individuals I was writing about because the theme that runs through this story is of extraordinary hardship and the will to overcome it.

  

  Laura Hillenbrand
  • Writing
  • Deep
  • Story

• I went to this little performing arts school in downtown Phoenix. You had to dance or act, and everyone sang in choir. I started out playing the saxophone, but I always wanted to be in an orchestra. That was a dream as a kid, and there aren't a lot of saxophones in an orchestra.

  

  Kacy Hill
  • School
  • Dream
  • Dance

• I know you can be up one minute and drop the next, so I'm trying to maintain a steady course so I can have some longevity.

  

  Orlando Bloom
  • Up
  • Trying
  • Know

• Each book tends to have its own identity rather than the author's. It speaks from itself rather than you. Each book is unlike the others because you are not bringing the same voice to every book. I think that keeps you alive as a writer.

  

  E. L. Doctorow
  • Book
  • Voice
  • Identity

• The best philosophers were not academics, but had another job, so their philosophy was not corrupted by careerism.

  

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • Job
  • Best
  • Philosophy

• If you live in rock and roll, as I do, you see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being aroused by male lust. It attracts women. It doesn't repel them.

  

  Camille Paglia
  • Women
  • Live
  • Reality

• No 27-year-old has the experience to run a company that does a quarter of a billion dollars a year in sales.

  

  Calvin Klein
  • Experience
  • Year
  • Sales

• I am a contradiction myself. I'm always looking for something that scares me because when I'm not scared, I'm not stimulated.

  

  Yasmine Al Masri
  • Contradiction
  • Scares
  • Stimulated

• I pick up the details that drive the organization insane. But sweating the details is more important than anything else.

  

  Indra Nooyi
  • Up
  • Important
  • Organization

• The Sino-Indian War in 1962 has fundamentally shaped and distorted Indian attitudes towards China. It also obscured a great deal of what has happened in China since 1962.

  

  Pankaj Mishra
  • Great
  • War
  • China

• I have a very rich and wonderful personal life, and at its core are my sons.

  

  Kate Mulgrew
  • Life
  • Rich
  • Personal

• Half the time, people will be abusing me on Twitter, and half the time, somebody will be praising me. So either it will go to my head, or I will take it to my heart. So better I stay away from it.

  

  Ranbir Kapoor
  • People
  • Time
  • Heart

• If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.

  

  Viktor E. Frankl
  • Life
  • Death
  • Suffering

• For better or worse, a lot of people who build things don't want to part ways. They don't have the short exit plan that a lot of the investors have.

  

  Cameron Winklevoss
  • People
  • Better
  • Short

• I work all day, do research, sketch my ideas, prepare for performances.

  

  Lady Gaga
  • Work
  • Day
  • Research

• Publishing for me is a business, not an ideology.

  

  Barry Eisler
  • Business
  • Me
  • Ideology

• Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.

  

  Edmund Burke
  • Society
  • Never
  • New

• I've wanted somehow to convey to you the sensations - the atmospheric pressure, you might say - of what it is to be seriously a long-term prisoner in an American prison.

  

  Jack Henry Abbott
  • Long
  • American
  • Pressure

• Under the Paris agreement, every one of the 147 signatories issues what is called an 'intended nationally determined contribution' (INDC), which amounts to a promise that the nation will take certain actions to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by a certain date.

  

  Charles C. Mann
  • Promise
  • Paris

• And this is something that I emphasize wherever I go - democracy does not stop on Election Day. For a real democracy to work, and for a society to thrive and continually improve, it requires that people continue to participate. And there have to be laws in place to protect that space and facilitate people’s ability to participate.

  

  Barack Obama
  • People
  • Work
  • Real

• My friend Ian Hagemann, a regular at Wiscon, once said on a panel that when he reads science fiction futures that are full of white people and no one else, he wonders when the race war happened that wiped out the majority of the human race, and why the writer hasn’t mentioned such an important plot point.

  

  Nalo Hopkinson
  • People
  • Important
  • Why

• It's difficult to get started-when it comes to dealing with an unknown quantity, people are reluctant to trust their own opinion. It helps if two or three people give you a boost.

  

  Lyle Lovett
  • People
  • Trust
  • Opinion

• We see plenty of artistic work that reflects superficial social conditions, but very little work that questions fundamental values.

  

  Ai Weiwei
  • Work