Ai Weiwei: Trending quotes (page 2)

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Ai Weiwei: 436   quotes 39   likes

“If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Ai Weiwei: ‘Shame on Me.’, 2011

Past , Future

“[My family] suffer so much. My mother was much older when I came out [of detention]. She had problems with her hearing and high blood pressure. But they still support me. When you make somebody disappear and you don’t announce it to the family, what is this? You make people desperate and bring them close to death. If our cat or dog is lost, it makes us desperately want to know where it is—so for humans disappearing, you can barely imagine the pain. What kind of society is this? If a society cannot even support somebody like me, then people ask: Who is under protection, then? That’s why there is such support for me. It is not because I am so beautiful or so charming. People feel, This guy is fighting for us.”

Ai Weiwei

“ Ai Weiwei: Artistic Licence http://www.economist.com/node/21554178.” Economist, May 5, 2012.
2010-, 2012

Death , Pain , People , Family

“It is better to have a retarded president who respects human values than a clever government without human values.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2008

“Behind every political deal in this country, the first casualties are always the ordinary people, who are barely treated as human.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Our Duty Is to Remember Sichuan, 2009

People , Country

“You see a Party system that crushes down anybody who [has] different opinions, who has different ideas in their mind. Simply to have different opinions can cost someone their life. They can be put in jail, they can be silenced, and they can [disappear]. And the other people would take it, not giving support.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Ai Weiwei, interview by Christiane Amanpour, 2010

Life , People , Idea , Support

“On the Internet, people do not know each other, they don’t have common leaders, sometimes not even a common political goal. But they come together on certain issues. I think that is a miracle. It never happened in the past. Without the Internet, I would not even be Ai Weiwei today. I would just be an artist somewhere doing my shows.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Ai Weiwei: ‘Shame on Me.’, 2011

People , Thinking , Past

“The Chinese [government] only superficially speaks the language of the international community.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2008

Communication

“Today China and the world will meet again. People will see that the planet is now smaller than at any time in history, that mankind should bid farewell to arrogance and indifference, to ignorance and discrimination, and understand that we share the same small piece of land. It will be a time to rediscover each other, to share what is good in life, to look each other in the eye and link all ten fingers.”

Ai Weiwei

“ Why I’ll Stay Away from the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/07/olympics2008.china.” Guardian, August 7, 2008.
2000-09, 2008

Life , People , World , History

“You can see China still cannot offer any real value to the world except as cheap labor, manufacturer, and its own so-called stability. Besides that, I don’t see any creative values and creative mind or thinking [that] can be announced from China. So this is the struggle China has to face in the next decades.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, I have to speak for people who are afraid, 2010

World , Thinking

“I always have an attitude. Even if there are no plans, I have an attitude. Perhaps I answered imprecisely before, saying that I am just a person. I am actually a person with an attitude.”

Ai Weiwei

Sans, Jerome. China Talks: Interviews with 32 Contemporary Artists. Beijing: Timezone8, 2009. P. 9.
2000-09, 2009

Personality

“Very few people know why art sells so high. I don’t even know.”

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei, interview in “ Change http://www.pbs.org/art21/watch-now/episode-change,” Episode 1, Season Six, Art: 21—Art in the Twenty-First Century, PBS, April 2012.
2010-, 2012

People , Art

“The state is taking action against people who have peacefully demonstrated their ideas. They are writers—all they did is to express their minds through the Internet. So the pattern is very clear. The state tries to maintain stability by crushing any thought of making change. It could happen to me, because I did the same thing and in many cases I went much further and deeper. But I always think the government can learn from their mistakes—they should learn and understand; they should be just as intelligent as anyone else.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, I have to speak for people who are afraid, 2010

People , Intelligence , Idea , Understanding

“During the days in detention, I thought most about the moon.”

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei on Twitter in English (beta). (December 10, 2011) http://aiwwenglish.tumblr.com/
2010-, Twitter feeds, 2010-12

“Chairman Mao was the first in the world to use Twitter. All his quotations are within 140 words.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, The Bold and the Beautiful, 2009

World

“They don’t believe in liberty. They don’t believe in China before the Communists. There is only one simple, clear task: to protect their control, to maintain their governing. Which is such a pity.”

Ai Weiwei

Wines, Michael. “ China’s Impolitic Artist, Still Waiting to Be Silenced http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/world/asia/28weiwei.html?pagewanted=all.” New York Times, November 28, 2009.
2000-09, 2009

“Art is always about overcoming obstacles between the inner condition and the skill for expression.”

Ai Weiwei

Solway, Diane. “Enforced Disappearance.” W Magazine, November 2011.
2010-, 2011

Art

“I don’t feel powerful at all. I am still under this kind of detention, and you know, this is kind of a bail. Even yesterday I realized while trying to take care of the baby, [at] the park, [I had] been secretly followed and it’s quite fragile. Maybe being powerful means to be fragile.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Ai Weiwei Does Not Feel Powerful, 2011

Feeling , Baby

“I wouldn’t say I’ve become more radical: I was born radical.”

Ai Weiwei

“ Artist’s Quotes http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/unilever-series-ai-weiwei/artists-quotes”. Excerpted from a conversation with curators Juliet Bingham and Marko Daniel, Beijing, May 31 and June 1, 2010. Tate Museums, UK.
2010-, 2010

“Creativity is part of human nature. It can only be untaught.”

Ai Weiwei

2010-, Life’s Work: Ai Weiwei, 2012

Nature , Parting

“Antiques exist as evidence of the cultural tracks we made in the past.”

Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2009

Past