Ai Weiwei Quotes
- All Quotes
-
When I returned to China from the United States, I didn’t have a U.S. passport, a wife, or a university degree. From the Chinese point of view, I was a total failure.
-
People have said, if you leave, you may never come back. Or they may not even let you leave. So this is always a cost you may have to pay. But I don’t want to restrict myself: When it happens, it happens. I have to deal with it, but not to prepare for it, because it is a kind of stupidity. If you prepare for it too much, you become a part of it.
-
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.
-
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.
-
What does it matter if China’s economy grows when there are no basic protections for its citizens?
-
In an environment without public platform nor protection, the individual is the most powerful and most responsible.
-
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?'
-
People often say I started to become too outspoken after a certain period. It’s all because of the Internet. If we didn’t have this technology I would be same as everybody else. I couldn’t really amplify my voice.
-
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.
-
But the internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have the last word – even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice.
-
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.
-
I wouldn’t say I’ve become more radical: I was born radical.
-
If Shakespeare were alive today, he might be writing on Twitter.
-
China is a society which forbids any flow of the information and freedom of speech. This is on record, so everybody should know this.
-
I don’t want the next generation to fight the same fight as I did.
-
Three years after the CCTV headquarters fire in Beijing in February 2009, human skeletons lie forgotten. Is anyone accountable?
-
It is better to have a retarded president who respects human values than a clever government without human values.
-
People always tell me, 'Weiwei, leave the nation, please.' Or 'Live longer and watch them die.' Either leave, or be patient and watch how they die. I really don’t know what I’m going to do.
-
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.'
-
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.
-
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.
-
I call on people to be 'obsessed citizens,' forever questioning and asking for accountability. That’s the only chance we have today of a healthy and happy life.
-
I think it’s a responsibility for any artist to protect freedom of expression and to use any way to extend this power.
-
The world is not changing if you don’t shoulder the burden of responsibility.