Ai Weiwei Quotes
- All Quotes
-
To protect the right of expression is the central part of an artist’s activity. . . . . In China many essential rights are lacking, and I wanted to remind people of this.
-
I often ask myself if I am afraid of being detained again. I love freedom as much as anybody else, maybe more than most. But it is a tragedy to live your life in fear. It is worse than actually losing your freedom.
-
You can see China still cannot offer any real value to the world except as cheap labor, manufacturer, and its own so-called stability. Besides that, I don’t see any creative values and creative mind or thinking that can be announced from China. So this is the struggle China has to face in the next decades.
-
I want to prove that the system is not working. . . . . You can’t simply say that the system is not working. You have to work through it
-
I’m an artist who is always looking for what is possible. I’m always looking to extend the boundaries.
-
I am very much interested in the so-called useless object. I mean, it takes perfect craftsmanship, beautiful material carefully measured and crafted, but at the same time it’s really useless.
-
Stupidity can win for a moment, but it can never really succeed because the nature of humans is to seek freedom. Rulers can delay that freedom, but they cannot stop it.
-
House arrest, travel restrictions, surveillance, stopping phone service, cutting the Internet connection. What we can still do is greet the crazy motherland once again.
-
I have to respect my life, and free expression is part of my life. I can never really silence myself.
-
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.
-
'Everything is art. Everything is politics.'
-
Very few people know why art sells so high. I don’t even know.
-
I always want to design a frame that’s open to everyone. I don’t see art as a secret code.
-
I loved New York-every inch of it. It was a little bit scary at that time, but still, the excitement was so strong-visually and intellectually. It was like a monster.
-
To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is the reason.
-
Tax crimes should be investigated by the tax bureau, not through secret police detention.
-
Anyone fighting for freedom does not want to totally lose their freedom.
-
They the government really want to maintain power. At the same time, they refuse to communicate. They refuse to have good intentions. They refuse to be sincere. How can that last?
-
Choices after waking up: To be true or to lie? To take action or be brainwashed? To be free or be jailed?
-
I am always trying to find how to get the message through. In Munich we custom-made five thousand backpacks like the ones of those students who died in Sichuan to construct a simple sentence spoken by the mother of a dead student. It was: 'She has been happily living in this world for seven years.'
-
Tips on surviving the regime: Respect yourself and speak for others. Do one small thing every day to prove the existence of justice.
-
If there is one who’s not free, then I am not free. If there is one who suffers, then I suffer.
-
My activism is a part of me. If my art has anything to do with me, then my activism is part of my art.
-
A fine line separates Chinese intellectuals and professors from the political gangsters who protect them.