“I don’t personally feel any association with a kind of culture related to state, or culture related to power, which I think is always disgusting.”

I think by shattering it we can create a new form, a new way to look at what is valuable – how we decide what is valuable.

The museums used to be exhibition halls for government propaganda, and now every city wants to build a museum.

The people will always have the last word – even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice. Such power will collapse because of a whisper.

To give a price to an artwork, no matter how high or low, is always absurd. It’s not something that can be measured by money or by certain numbers.

We are living in a popular culture where everything is overexposed.

My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate [the two] is itself a very political intention.

To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is the reason.

Man has a tendency to try to give clear reasons to be rational, but often you can see how all those reasons are not convincing and turn out to be a big nonsense.

Dictatorship is a story about death of others who turn out to be you coincidently.

China hasn’t only existed for one day. Now, the whole nation has become richer and it’s become a problem. The problem is universal. The factor is big. Everybody has to rethink the balance of the world and the whole landscape.

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.

I think China is laughing about the results of the presidential elections. China, Russia, they all laugh about it.

Say what you say plainly, and then take responsibility for it.

My typical day is I wake up and appreciate that I can still wake up.

I am very much interested in the so-called useless object. I mean, it takes perfect craftsmanship, beautiful material carefully measured and crafted, but at the same time it’s really useless.

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.

Unless this is firmly realized we cannot understand what saintly association means, we cannot understand what the shelter of a spiritual master means, we cannot understand that we are dependent and he is our maintainer.

They claim that autism naturally occurs at about 18 months, when the MMR is routinely given, so the association is merely coincidental and not causal. But the onset of autism at 18 months is a recent development.

Similarly, someone with lots of skill but a weak network won’t realize his or her fullest potential. So, you need both.

At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous.

Me as a person, I’m not the president of the NBPA (National Basketball Players Association). I don’t even know what to say. I’m not like this perfect, buttoned-up, suit-and-tie guy.

But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system.

Rockefeller and his associates did not build the Standard Oil Co. in the board rooms of Wall Street banks.

In reality, the professor benefits equally by his association with gifted students working under him.