Ai Weiwei Quotes
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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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I also have to speak out for people around me who are afraid, who think it is not worth it or who have totally given up hope. So I want to set an example: you can do it and this is okay, to speak out.
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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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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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The Olympics are an event manipulated into misleading people into believing that we have entered a new, successful and harmonious period in our history. This is not true.
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China is a society which forbids any flow of the information and freedom of speech. This is on record, so everybody should know this.
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It is better to have a retarded president who respects human values than a clever government without human values.
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With 140 words in Chinese, you really can write a novel. Most of Confucius’s sentences are only four words, so 140 words might take his whole life to write. And you can discuss the most profound ideas related to democracy, freedom, poetry.
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I don’t want the next generation to fight the same fight as I did.
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The disaster-makers always get away, while the innocent are always punished.
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I think China is in a chaos now and it could be more chaos. It’s an orderly chaos. It’s a party that ruthlessly violates every human’s basic rights to serve its own purpose.'
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Living in a system under the Communist ideology, an artist cannot avoid fighting for freedom of expression. You always have to be aware that art is not only a self-expression but a demonstration of human rights and dignity. To express yourself freely, a right as personal as it is, has always been difficult, given the political situation.
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The Sichuan disaster is not the first nor the most wrongful. But all the details of this tragedy will be forgotten, and once again it will be like nothing ever happened. Eventually all these disasters will together create a bizarre miracle called civilization and evolution.
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Police in China can do whatever they want; after 81 days in arbitrary detention you clearly realise that they don’t have to obey their own laws.
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Only with the Internet can a peasant I have never met hear my voice and I can learn what’s on his mind. A fairy tale has come true.
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At midnight they can come into your room and take you away. They can put a black hood on you, take you to a secret place and interrogate you, trying to stop what you’re doing. They threaten people, your family, saying: 'Your children won’t find jobs.'
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Neither fairness nor justice, neither reality nor humanity can be simulated or manipulated by wires or remote controls.
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The world is not changing if you don’t shoulder the burden of responsibility.
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On the Internet, people do not know each other, they don’t have common leaders, sometimes not even a common political goal. But they come together on certain issues. I think that is a miracle. It never happened in the past. Without the Internet, I would not even be Ai Weiwei today. I would just be an artist somewhere doing my shows.
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I wouldn’t say I’ve become more radical: I was born radical.
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This simple form of repression, of using the method of not letting anyone speak, will never succeed.
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What does it matter if China’s economy grows when there are no basic protections for its citizens?
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I think restrictions are an essential condition in the fight for freedom of expression. It’s also a source for any kind of creativity.