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.
AI WEIWEIChina 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.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
-
-
It became like a symbolic thing, to be “an artist.” After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.
AI WEIWEI -
During the days in detention, I thought most about the moon.
AI WEIWEI -
China restricts the society’s freedom of speech. The Communist Party imposes these limits because it lacks confidence towards the future and has no ideals.
AI WEIWEI -
I also have to speak out for people around me who are afraid, who think it is not worth it or who have totally given up hope. So I want to set an example: you can do it and this is OK, to speak out.
AI WEIWEI -
If I look at it, I would laugh. I don’t know how I became successful.
AI WEIWEI -
Politics is like air and water. And you know if there is bad politics. Everyone is polluted. Everyone is unhealthy. See the people walking on the street: how they act.
AI WEIWEI -
The whole attitude of society has become much more open and realistic. They realize that the only way to make a more democratic and free society is to let different opinions come out.
AI WEIWEI -
We are living in a popular culture where everything is overexposed.
AI WEIWEI -
My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall.
AI WEIWEI -
I have to respect my life, and free expression is part of my life. I can never really silence myself.
AI WEIWEI -
That’s why I always question this sense. The feeling of home really requires a lot of trust. It requires you to identify with it, which I always find myself very contradictory to.
AI WEIWEI -
Even today the borders they’re seeing the physical borders are very different from the political borders. Because all those powers are so connected, and you cannot even see whose interest in what move.
AI WEIWEI -
This is a very general understanding of art in China, that being an artist can make you money and turn you into a star.
AI WEIWEI -
There are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship.
AI WEIWEI -
Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.
AI WEIWEI -
Mass production is nothing new. Weren’t cathedrals built through mass production? The pyramids?
AI WEIWEI -
Liberty is about the right to question everything.
AI WEIWEI -
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.
AI WEIWEI -
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.
AI WEIWEI -
I don’t think there is a distinct change, because in the West I’m not a person who can serve his purpose.
AI WEIWEI -
You only have temporary curiosity, amusement, and challenges, but that does not necessarily mean you are really convinced that it’s necessary or that it’s not even worth to do it.
AI WEIWEI -
I wouldn’t say I’ve become more radical: I was born radical.
AI WEIWEI -
If civil society has nobody who protects the law, then what kind of society is that?
AI WEIWEI -
I want people to see their own power.
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 -
And the kind of condition he had when he was in this society – the kind of mistreatment society gave him.
AI WEIWEI