Ai Weiwei Quotes
- All Quotes
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The great success of this system is that it makes the general public afraid of taking responsibility, afraid of taking a position or giving a definite answer, or even of making mistakes.
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The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It’s as simple as that.
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When the mayor of Nagoya denies the Nanjing Massacre, he gets blacklisted by the city of Nanjing. When the government of Sichuan denies 'tofu dregs' construction which caused the collapse of several schools, they get blacklisted by me.
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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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Maybe there is something I got from it. Maybe you also start to be clear on certain things.
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Because of the economic crisis, China and the United States are bound together. This is a totally new phenomenon, and nobody will fight for ideology anymore. It’s all about business.
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Tax crimes should be investigated by the tax bureau, not through secret police detention.
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We have to give our opinion, we have to say something, or we are a part of it. As an artist I am forced to say something.
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They all ask: Why? Why is it that this man’s name Ai Weiwei can never be typed on a Chinese computer or the whole sentence will disappear?
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A city is a place that can offer maximum freedom. Otherwise it’s incomplete.
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Tips on surviving the regime: Respect yourself and speak for others. Do one small thing every day to prove the existence of justice.
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The biggest crime of a dictatorship is to eradicate human feelings from people.
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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.'
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My activism is a part of me. If my art has anything to do with me, then my activism is part of my art.
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If there is one who’s not free, then I am not free. If there is one who suffers, then I suffer.
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But censorship by itself doesn’t work. It is, as Mao said, about the pen and the gun.
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I think I have this responsibility to my father’s generation, and especially future generations.
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House arrest, travel restrictions, surveillance, stopping phone service, cutting the Internet connection. What we can still do is greet the crazy motherland once again.
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I’m not sure I’m good at art, but I find an escape in it.
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It doesn’t matter where I am-China will stay in me. I don’t know how far I can still walk on this road and what is the limit.
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Your own acts tell the world who you are and what kind of society you think it should be.
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I think by shattering it we can create a new form, a new way to look at what is valuable-how we decide what is valuable.
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Nothing. Jail is about nothing. Completely blank.
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Very few people know why art sells so high. I don’t even know.