Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.
AI WEIWEIThat’s why the country can’t face up to open competition – unless it resorts to measures like North Korea.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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A lot of the time [in the U.S.], I was thinking about how spending time is always questionable or is always the biggest obstacle in my life.
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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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The society was so different [in China] – it was a feudalistic society. It didn’t come to a point of industrial revolution until twenty years ago.
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I came back [to Beijing ] because that’s the only time I had an excuse to come back, or otherwise I would never have a reason to come back.
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Each year, more people want to become artists.
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If you don’t act, the danger becomes stronger.
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I don’t think China has professional museums – not in the past, present, or near future.
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A nation that has no music and no fairytales is a tragedy.
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I never really read Allen Ginsberg poetry, even though I have a book he gave me.
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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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The fantasy we had with pearls was always so luxurious and unique with a kind of rareness.
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It’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.
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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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If I look at it, I would laugh. I don’t know how I became successful.
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