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.
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
-
-
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.
AI WEIWEI -
Everything is selected by the central government without good judgment or an understanding of culture to make it really safe. They will become nobody to maintain their power and be raised to the next higher level.
AI WEIWEI -
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.
AI WEIWEI -
There’s no single artwork I even want to mention or that I can even really think about it to have any feeling, to be proud of it.
AI WEIWEI -
Just look at the statistics: Each university has tens of thousands of applications for students who want to be in art school, but they can only accept a few hundred.
AI WEIWEI -
A small act is worth a million thoughts.
AI WEIWEI -
If artists cannot speak up for human dignity or rights, then who else will do it?
AI WEIWEI -
So for too long Americans take liberty as granted. We think we are in the safe hand, the democracy and the liberty, which is not true. And it can be even getting much worse than today.
AI WEIWEI -
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.
AI WEIWEI -
I was in the most restricted prison in China, the most tough. The design of the prison is modeled for internal crimes of the Communist party, so it’s like a mafia family’s law. It’s independent to the law this nation openly applies.
AI WEIWEI -
The whole Chinese system – not just the political leadership, the military too, the whole power structure, our education system, the whole of society – is suffering from being cut off from the free flow of information.
AI WEIWEI -
I think to deal with the situation like human crisis, 65 million people being displaced, lost their home, and with such human tragedy, has to make every level of society to be conscious and to be alert about the situation.
AI WEIWEI -
The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It’s as simple as that.
AI WEIWEI -
Maybe being powerful means to be fragile.
AI WEIWEI -
We are living in a popular culture where everything is overexposed.
AI WEIWEI