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.
AI WEIWEIHopefully, 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.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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I think everybody deserves freedom. Freedom is such an abstract word, but it’s all we need.
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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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I think the pearls – one is a necklace, and another you have five hundred pounds of pearls, which may be one million pearls in a bowl – really show a kind of [society] condition.
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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.
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Had I to create a name for these times, I’d say it is the age of craziness
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They see how dramatic U.S. has to be put this kind of shame on its own – cannot handle the situation. Or show such a difficulty with this liberal ideas. Men or women created equal. And to defend those very essential ideas.
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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 am everywhere and I am nowhere. That’s the beauty of the Internet Age.
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I think you can give meaning to any condition; you can be poor or unsuccessful or be so-called successful. But I don’t think that it would give an individual human being a better condition.
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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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The United States is a melting pot. Like John F. Kennedy said, it’s a nation of immigrants. But Donald Trump wants to build a fence that clearly makes the statement: “You and I are divided.
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No state or society can claim to have established human rights once and for 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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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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A society is healthy only when it allows its members to discuss their thoughts openly. This is also the only way that a society can gather consensus, let everyone express his or her wish, and foster creativity.
AI WEIWEI