I have always stated I designed the stadium as a toilet seat.
AI WEIWEISelf-censorship is insulting to the self. Timidity is a hopeless way forward.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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I grew up in a desert, which has no kind of imagination.
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Every day I’m learning something new from the practice. It’s very rewarding.
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I spent a lot of time standing on street corners [of New York City] talking to local residents. I spent time in bookstores and galleries. But most of the time, I really did not have much to do.
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Behind every political deal in this country, the first casualties are always the ordinary people, who are barely treated as human.
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In China, we don’t have any contemporary art museums. Until a few years ago, we didn’t even have a gallery.
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I spend a lot of time talking to journalists.
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I think of art as coming from daily life, daily experience. I think it’s very important not to have it become work for some kind of elite circle.
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I think it’s more important to show your work to the public.
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A state like China looks so powerful, but they are so scared of the Internet, so the Internet is more powerful than them.
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Choices after waking up: To be true or to lie? To take action or be brainwashed? To be free or be jailed?
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This so-called contemporary art is not a form, but a philosophy of society.
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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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Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.
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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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I believe [the architecture firm] Herzog and de Meuron and our collaboration made the product the best it could be.
AI WEIWEI






