Ai Weiwei Quotes
- All Quotes
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This is something you can never erase. It leaves a scar on you.
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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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It is absurd that so much money has been wasted on manipulating public opinion, on simulating emotion. This nation is notorious for its ability to make or fake anything cheaply. 'Made-in-China' goods now fill homes around the world. But our giant country has a small problem. We can’t manufacture the happiness of our people.
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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.
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Freedom of expression is a very essential condition for me to make any art. Also, it is an essential value for my life. I have to protect this right and also to fight for the possibility.
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I wouldn’t say I’ve become more radical: I was born radical.
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If Shakespeare were alive today, he might be writing on Twitter.
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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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In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want-not only you, your whole family and all people like you.
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Being an artist is more of a mindset, a way of seeing things; it is no longer so much about producing something.
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I don’t feel powerful at all. I am still under this kind of detention, and you know, this is kind of a bail. Even yesterday I realized while trying to take care of the baby, at the park, I had been secretly followed and it’s quite fragile. Maybe being powerful means to be fragile.
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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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I don’t want the next generation to fight the same fight as I did.
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I see myself not as a leader but as somebody who initiates things or finds the problem or provokes a discussion. You have to be always ready to engage, willing to participate. When events or history happen, you just have to be aware and respond.
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We see plenty of artistic work that reflects superficial social conditions, but very little work that questions fundamental values.
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I don’t really care that much about if I want to be more successful or less successful in art, because I never think life and art should be separate. What’s life if you don’t have conversation and joy and anger?
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I cannot ever accept the kind of conditions where you can sacrifice someone’s rights.
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Chairman Mao was the first in the world to use Twitter. All his quotations are within 140 words.
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You see a Party system that crushes down anybody who has different opinions, who has different ideas in their mind. Simply to have different opinions can cost someone their life. They can be put in jail, they can be silenced, and they can disappear. And the other people would take it, not giving support.
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Art is not an end but a beginning.
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Three years after the CCTV headquarters fire in Beijing in February 2009, human skeletons lie forgotten. Is anyone accountable?
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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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Consider why the quality of school dinners is declining, even as more and more golf courses are opened.
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You know, if they can do this to me they can do this to anybody, and they have been doing this for over sixty years . . . . it’s a very strange world.