For artists and intellectuals today, what is most needed is to be clear about social responsibility, because that is what most people automatically give up. Just to protect yourself as an individual is very political.
AI WEIWEIIf artists cannot speak up for human dignity or rights, then who else will do it?
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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They lack any ability to sense what is beautiful or what is proper. They can be learned and skillful, but they lack the ability to make their own free judgment. It is really sad to see young adults of 20, 25 years who were never taught to make their own decisions.
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The museums used to be exhibition halls for government propaganda, and now every city wants to build a museum.
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I think by not letting young people be fully informed, how can they have energy and passion and the right picture of the world? I think that’s the true crime.
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I have to respect my life, and free expression is part of my life. I can never really silence myself.
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It’s like the mountains, the ocean and the rivers. It has its own geological forms. Societies cannot be flat. But during change, human rights, human dignity and free speech have to be protected. Otherwise, we’ll be going backward.
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The practice of photography is no longer a means for recording reality. Instead, it has become reality itself
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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.
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We grew up in a very material-lacking socialist society, but today China is a capitalist society. It’s very materialistic. It’s full of desire and luxury goods.
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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.
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I think Donald Trump should cool down a little bit. To pay more attention to the history. To really understand what U.S.’s value is about. I think, as a president, those things you always have to ask.
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I think my stance and my way of life is my most important art.
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I think U.S. and China is a big opportunity, to be seen as partner or some kind of strategic partner maybe. But those kind of powers have a way of getting too big, then we’ll have competition.
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The jobs for 7 million university graduates every year, the immense corruption: Even some Western governments would have to scramble to find solutions to such problems.
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I don’t think China has professional museums – not in the past, present, or near future.
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At the moment about 350,000 students return to China from abroad each year – 350,000 young and educated people. I know about them because they know me and often ask me in the street if they can take a selfie with me.
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We are not on – even just a step away from the most brutal and primitive crudity. To be very crude on those issues, which is always challenges and we always have to look at the situation like a mirror, to draw some understanding.
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What counts in the end is what the government does.
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Life is much more interesting when you make a little bit of effort.
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Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.
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Now many enterprises are made by individuals, so the attitude has started to change.
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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 don’t think I was very structured in that society and I don’t really believe in personal success, which most Americans believe in.
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I never regret anything.
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If artists cannot speak up for human dignity or rights, then who else will do it?
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People who can’t do that don’t get a sense of responsibility. And if you lack a sense of responsibility, you push the blame onto the system.
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If there’s the right condition, I always want to express the concept or ideas in a very independent way.
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