“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.”
2000-09, Escape from Propaganda, 2009
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Ai Weiwei 218
Chinese concept artist 1957Related quotes
The study of the solar corona and prominences without eclipses (George Darwin Lecture) in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (1939).
Context: The new and the old methods complete one another on numerous points, and their simultaneous use will increase our knowledge of the outer atmosphere of the Sun much more rapidly.

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 学习有两种态度。一种是教条主义的态度,不管我国情况,适用的和不适用的,一起搬来。这种态度不好。另一种态度,学习的时候用脑筋想一下,学那些和我国情况相适合的东西,即吸取对我们有益的经验,我们需要的是这样一种态度

2015, Naturalization Ceremony speech (December 2015)
Context: Just about every nation in the world, to some extent, admits immigrants. But there’s something unique about America. We don’t simply welcome new immigrants, we don’t simply welcome new arrivals -- we are born of immigrants. That is who we are. Immigration is our origin story. And for more than two centuries, it’s remained at the core of our national character; it’s our oldest tradition. It’s who we are. It’s part of what makes us exceptional.

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 239.

cubs refers sneering to the Cubists
as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008.
1912, Boccioni's 'Sculptural Manifesto', 1912,

Broadcast from London (25 September 1933), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 14.
1933