I don’t think my father had a direct influence on me, but I do think, more or less, I was influenced by his independent individualism.
AI WEIWEIPolitics 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.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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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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[Museums] all belongs to the cultural department, which is the biggest cultural department in the world.
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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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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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The museums used to be exhibition halls for government propaganda, and now every city wants to build a museum.
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I never felt like a Chinese citizen because I was pushed away at a very young age. My father, a writer, was a national enemy of the Communist Party. He was forbidden to write for 20 years.
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If there is no free speech, every single life has lived in vain
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Stupidity can win for a moment, but it can never really succeed because the nature of humans is to seek freedom. Rulers can delay that freedom, but they cannot stop it.
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This world should be much more open and should be much more free, so the young people would have the chance to exercise the quality of their lives.
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And the kind of condition he had when he was in this society – the kind of mistreatment society gave him.
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In the end, I think, the state’s rigidity is a function of its own insecurity, its indecisiveness.
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It also makes humanity much more safe. If we see pureness somewhere as something to be desired, the trouble starts.
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Hopefully, 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.
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Of course, people will call you an old artist or young artist, which is just a character of you.
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Just look at the statistics: Each university has tens of thousands of applications for students who want to be in art school, but they can only accept a few hundred.
AI WEIWEI