The tragic reality of today is reflected in the true plight of our spiritual existence. We are spineless and cannot stand straight.
AI WEIWEIThat’s why I always question this sense. The feeling of home really requires a lot of trust. It requires you to identify with it, which I always find myself very contradictory to.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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Liberty is about our rights to question everything.
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If a master, a wise and experienced man, wields a great weapon, that’s beautiful. He can serve peace with it. But if someone’s emotions are imbalanced, even if he has the best equipment,
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Politics is like air and water. And you know if there is bad politics. Everyone is polluted. Everyone is unhealthy. See the people walking on the street: how they act.
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This is a very general understanding of art in China, that being an artist can make you money and turn you into a star.
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[Being unique] gives so much privilege to people who can make it, rather than having some moral and aesthetic discussions.
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The leadership knows that you cannot solve the issues of China’s future with the means of the past. The demographic consequences of the one-child policy, the build-up of the welfare state.
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I think everybody deserves freedom. Freedom is such an abstract word, but it’s all we need.
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For me, it is OK as long as I can breathe, as long as my heart is pumping, as long as I can express myself.
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We literally lived underground. We dug a hole and lived there for years. My father cleaned public toilets, even though he was a highly respected poet.
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The world is not changing if you don’t shoulder the burden of responsibility.
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Of course, most luxury goods in China are for corrupted officials and their relatives. And that made China become the biggest luxury-goods market.
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Chinese government is very clearly losing power in every aspect, but trying to fix up all the problems or potential problems.
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Selling high or low doesn’t mean anything. It has to do purely with the market.
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I don’t think China has professional museums – not in the past, present, or near future.
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Even if I have hundreds of things to do, the disconnected feeling is still there because it is very hard to find a real purpose of life.
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Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don’t think art is elite or mysterious. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics.
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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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Any politician who respects China’s government should tell it openly what is in his heart. It is disrespectful to keep quiet about such issues – both vis-a-vis the government and the people concerned.
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If you don’t act, the danger becomes stronger.
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Of course, people will call you an old artist or young artist, which is just a character of you.
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[Cultural departments] don’t care about culture. Maybe they’re the furthest from the people who understand culture.
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It became like a symbolic thing, to be “an artist.” After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.
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Everything is art. Everything is politics.
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My typical day is I wake up and appreciate that I can still wake up.
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I saw [Allen Ginsberg] more as an old man who liked poetry and who had a lot of physical and emotional problems. We liked our time together.
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You only have temporary curiosity, amusement, and challenges, but that does not necessarily mean you are really convinced that it’s necessary or that it’s not even worth to do it.
AI WEIWEI