“In talking about memory and our history, I think our humanity, especially in China, is cut. Cut, broken, separated. If we have a character from our history and memory, the character is broken, it’s shattered.”

—  Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Escape from Propaganda, 2009

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In talking about memory and our history, I think our humanity, especially in China, is cut. Cut, broken, separated. If …" by Ai Weiwei?
Ai Weiwei photo
Ai Weiwei218
Chinese concept artist 1957

Related quotes

Ai Weiwei photo

“Tradition is only a readymade. It’s for us to make a new gesture—to use it as a reference, more as a starting point than conclusion. Of course, there are very different attitudes and interpretations about our past and our memory of it. And ours is never a complete one, but is broken. In China, but also in my practice.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Escape from Propaganda, 2009

“All these things have happened in our history, and we need to talk about them. What kind of country are we that our history is so tragic?”

Yuan Tengfei (1972) history teacher in Beijing, China

Reported in Didi Kirsten Tatlow, "A System Afraid of Its Own History", The New York Times (September 16, 2010).

“And then there is our personal history. Memories only we share. Things not another living soul would understand.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

“This time during the Second World War is part of my history, part of my memory, but it is the latest part of my memory, so the memories of each human being goes much more back, it goes to the dinosaurs, even later [Kiefer means: earlier].... I think we even remember geological times. So this is one little part of our / of mine memory”

Anselm Kiefer (1945) German painter and sculptor

the Second World War
n.p.
Tim Marlow joins Anselm Kiefer to discuss his work' - 2005

Anastacia photo

“The faded photographs
The frames of broken glass
The shattered memories
Time will soon erase all these souvenirs
Falls from a thousand tears
But when I wake up you are never there.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Pieces of a Dream
Pieces of a Dream (2005)

George Eliot photo

“Character is not cut in marble - it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“For every generation, there is a destiny. For some, history decides. For this generation, the choice must be our own. […] Our destiny in the midst of change will rest on the unchanged character of our people, and on their faith.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Inaugural address (1965)
Context: For every generation, there is a destiny. For some, history decides. For this generation, the choice must be our own. [... ] Our destiny in the midst of change will rest on the unchanged character of our people, and on their faith.

Janna Levin photo

“It might seem limited to impose our human perception to try to deduce the grandest cosmic code. But we are the product of the universe and I think it can be argued that the entire cosmic code is imprinted in us. Just as our genes carry the memory of our biological ancestors, our logic carries the memory of our cosmological ancestry. We are not just imposing human-centric notions on a cosmos independent of us. We are progeny of the cosmos and our ability to understand it is an inheritance.”

Janna Levin (1967) American theoretical cosmologist

How the Universe Got its Spots (2002)

“So many of the ideas on which our psychologists base their beliefs about human intelligence, memory, and learning are all wishful thinking.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Flowers for Algernon (1966)

Walter Cronkite photo

“I think that our comfort is in our history.”

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) American broadcast journalist

Free the Airwaves! (2002)

Related topics