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.
AI WEIWEIIt’s the place they take you before they give you over to the judicial system. You stay there for a year or two and they make you really suffer to confess everything.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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I was an illegal alien for many, many years. I couldn’t move. If I moved I could not even get a visa back.
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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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If you don’t act, the danger becomes stronger.
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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.
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Of course, there [in China] has to be chaos. It has to be crazy, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong about it except this government, which is really incapable of doing anything meaningful.
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Hopefully, other successes aren’t like me. It carries much more meaning to other people; my success story is irrelevant. It doesn’t make any sense.
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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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In this kind of dictatorship, in this kind of totalitarian society, it is easy to make deals that you cannot make in a democratic society.
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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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I don’t care if this is a great cultural event or a national symbol. It has nothing to do with me. It deals with the city.
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Life is much more interesting when you make a little bit of effort.
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People have a tendency to become elite rather than to care about the general conditions of the society, which makes me sick. It’s an unbearable condition.
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Democracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists.
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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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Every day I’m learning something new from the practice. It’s very rewarding.
AI WEIWEI