The only way to avoid misunderstanding, war and bloodshed is to defend freedom of expression and to communicate with sincerity, concern and good intentions.
AI WEIWEII think by not letting young people be fully informed, how can they have energy and passion and the right picture of the world? I think that’s the true crime.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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Maybe being powerful means to be fragile.
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I don’t think [price] reflects if the work is good or bad.A good artist shouldn’t be nervous about that.
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A small act is worth a million thoughts.
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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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If human rights are supposed to have any meaning, then they have to be discussed openly.
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By participating in the society we live in, we understand our conditions and the way we relate to the world.
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Liberty is about the right to question everything.
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I don’t think there is a distinct change, because in the West I’m not a person who can serve his purpose.
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Now I’ve come to such a mixed culture: America, Europe, South America, Africa. And the politics are changing everywhere all the time and becoming even more unpredictable.
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That’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.
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If we all say the same thing, then I think the government has to listen. But because no one is saying it, I become singled out, even though what I’m saying is common sense.
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I believe [the architecture firm] Herzog and de Meuron and our collaboration made the product the best it could be.
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Behind every political deal in this country, the first casualties are always the ordinary people, who are barely treated as human.
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I lived there [ in New York City] as an artist, but never as a Chinese artist.
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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.
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As long as I can communicate, I’m not so lonely. If I cannot travel, or do art, or have company, if they take away all my belongings, it doesn’t matter at all.
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Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don’t think art is elite or mysterious.
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Today, the general masses in this society are in this political-social condition that really encourages people to become rich and become a star and be unique.
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I think U.S. and China is a big opportunity, to be seen as partner or some kind of strategic partner maybe. But those kind of powers have a way of getting too big, then we’ll have competition.
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The rest of the world understands little about China’s changes and the possibilities and crises that come with them.
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They’ve become part of a conspiracy, collaborators of the crime, which is lying to the general public and trying to hide the kind of criminal acts happening in many cases.
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To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It’s a very complicated process to do large projects.
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We should also leave behind discrimination, because it is narrow-minded and ignorant, denies contact and warmth; and corrodes mankind’s belief that we can better ourselves.
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Somehow, we [ Tan Dun and director Chen Kaige] were all privileged at the time; we could be outside of China. But at the moment, we had no sense of what the future was going to be like.
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I think optimism is whether you are still exhilarated by life, whether you are curious, whether you still believe there is possibility.
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Even today the borders they’re seeing the physical borders are very different from the political borders. Because all those powers are so connected, and you cannot even see whose interest in what move.
AI WEIWEI