Ai Weiwei Quotes
China might seem quite successful in its controls, but it has only raised the water level. It’s like building a dam: it thinks there is more water so it will build higher. But every drop of water is still in there. It doesn’t understand how to let the pressure out. It builds up a way to maintain control and push the problem to the next generation.
Quotes to Explore
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Where are the gains for religious freedom and human rights to justify all the bombings, invasions and wars we have conducted in the lands from Libya to Pakistan - to justify the losses we have endured and the death and suffering we have inflicted?
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Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.
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As far as religion goes, I feel like everyone should have their own one-on-one with God.
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I cannot determine what people or nations should do, but I do think that extremism gives birth to following and subsequent extremism.
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If your work requires you to travel, you will understand that there's no vacation destination like home.
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Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
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I call Washington 'the city of the perishable.'
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In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of 'I hate strangers and anything that's different.'
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I was into basketball, but then once I found contact sports, it was over. I never played basketball again in my life.
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My voice, I have to say, is kind of miraculous because I was born with a cleft palate.
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If tomorrow the Chinese decide not to supply the world with raw materials, the pharma industry would collapse.
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A lot of people think that to make it as a model you just need to be pretty and slim, but they're wrong. There's a lot of hard work involved. You have to be very focused, know what kind of work you're aiming for.
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Know your priorities and identify the five powerful action steps that you intend to take to move your initiatives forward each day. If you go to a tree with an ax and take five whacks at the tree every day, it doesn't matter if it's an oak or a redwood; eventually, the tree has to fall down.
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It's just different in the music world. You come more with an entourage.
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By placing discretion in the hands of an official to grant or deny a license, such a statute creates a threat of censorship that by its very existence chills free speech.
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Everyone around me was super-cool and laid back and skinny and tan and volleyball-y, and I was just this neurotic kid who was singing 'Annie Get Your Gun.'
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My idea of fast food is a mallard.
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I always like to play roles where I either love the character or think that it's a story that I can tell better than anyone else. There are always reasons for me to do whatever I do.
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I was brought up by parents who embraced the 1960s and taught me that being faithful isn't the be-all and end-all.
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The most important images for human beings are simply words, which are abstract symbols. ...Evolution has greatly enlarged the front lobes of the human brain, which govern the sense of the past and the future; and... they are probably the seat of our other images.
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If investors avoid the Treasury market, we could be unable to pay off maturing securities, which would mean an immediate default. Market participants generally agree that even a brief default would create potentially catastrophic risks to the financial system, like the meltdown of 2008.
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As a kid, I was growing up in an era of celebration of the Civil War centennial, with a lot of 'Lost Cause' emphasis on the Confederacy. I used to play Civil War soldiers with my brothers as a child, and my older brother always insisted that he got to be Lee, and I got be Grant. I never knew that Grant won until quite some time had passed.
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My parents gave me a small telescope, then I built my own, and one thing led to another. So that's how I ended up going from being a hobby astronomer to a professional astronomer.
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China might seem quite successful in its controls, but it has only raised the water level. It’s like building a dam: it thinks there is more water so it will build higher. But every drop of water is still in there. It doesn’t understand how to let the pressure out. It builds up a way to maintain control and push the problem to the next generation.
