Ai Weiwei Quotes
- All Quotes
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Twitter is the people’s tool, the tool of the ordinary people, people who have no other resources.
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If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future.
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'It became like a symbolic thing, to be 'an artist.' After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.'
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They have to have an enemy. They have to create you as their enemy in order for them to continue their existence. It’s very ironic.
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I don’t know about five years from now. I have no plans for that. Maybe I’ll be forgotten by then.
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I think we have too much history. It’s not so important. I think people should have fun and enjoy their own time. I haven’t done much, so why should I waste people’s memory?'
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There is no revolution like the Communist revolution. You simply burn all the books, kill all of the thinking people and use the poor proletariat to create a very simple benchmark to gauge social change.
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They don’t believe in liberty. They don’t believe in China before the Communists. There is only one simple, clear task: to protect their control, to maintain their governing. Which is such a pity.
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This is something you can never erase. It leaves a scar on you.
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A land that rejects the truth, barricades itself against change and lacks the spirit of freedom is hopeless.
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Contemporary art and the Communist Party are an impossible situation. It’s like oil and water-they can never mix.
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The Chinese authorities think of artists as prostitutes. And in reality it’s true: in the Communist system artists just represent what the power structure seeks them to represent. It is prostitution.'
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In talking about memory and our history, I think our humanity, especially in China, is cut. Cut, broken, separated. If we have a character from our history and memory, the character is broken, it’s shattered.
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I think it’s a responsibility for any artist to protect freedom of expression and to use any way to extend this power.
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They tell us it will be about 'emotions' and 'friendship,' that it will be a night of joy. Who are they kidding?
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The most unfair things that could have happened in a society fell upon a blind man. This is something that no one can accept or explain away with any excuse. Everyone will ask: 'Do we actually have to exist in a society like this?'
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Tradition is only a readymade. It’s for us to make a new gesture-to use it as a reference, more as a starting point than conclusion. Of course, there are very different attitudes and interpretations about our past and our memory of it. And ours is never a complete one, but is broken. In China, but also in my practice.
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When I checked into a hospital in Germany, after having been beaten by police in Sichuan, I was told there was bleeding in my brain and I was near fatal collapse. I was rushed into surgery. When I awoke I felt like a normal person again. But I will not feel whole until I and my fellow Chinese can live freely.
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Writers, artists, and commentators on websites are detained or thrown into jail when they reflect on democracy, opening up, reform and reason. This is the reality of China.
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My blog is an extension of my thinking. Why should I deform my thinking simply because I live under a government that espouses an ideology which I believe to be totally against humanity?
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I wouldn’t say I’ve become more radical: I was born radical.
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I always have an attitude. Even if there are no plans, I have an attitude. Perhaps I answered imprecisely before, saying that I am just a person. I am actually a person with an attitude.
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In China, there is a long history of the government not revealing information, so it’s difficult for the Chinese people to ever know the truth. It is vital that we try to bring that truth to life.
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Later I became very involved in writing. I really enjoyed that moment of writing. People would pass around my sentences. That was a feeling I never had before. It was like a bullet out of the gun.