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Say what you say plainly, and then take responsibility for it.

Ai Weiwei

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Ai Weiwei
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: May 18
Architect
Consultant
Contemporary Artist
Designer
Film Director
Human Rights Activist
Painter
Photographer
Sculptor
Social Activist
Peking
Wei-wei Ai
Weiwei Ai
Ai Wei Wei
Plainly
Responsibility
Take

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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To call yourself a Chinese artist or woman artist or African artist reflects a certain kind of condition. To me, that is not necessary.
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Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it.
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I spend a lot of time talking to journalists.
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If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future.
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If you just turn to your paper or television each day, there are thousands of stories that are much more shocking than the gallery artworks.
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I always admire writers. My father was a writer, a poet. I always admire people who can clearly state their mind.
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A lot of the time [in the U.S.], I was thinking about how spending time is always questionable or is always the biggest obstacle in my life.
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A nation that has no music and no fairytales is a tragedy.
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Art needs to stand for something.
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Individual that means he has his own special way to communicate, which creates the form of him. In the information age, this expression and communication has become so different.
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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. You don't have to march on Tiananmen, but you do have to be clear-minded, to find your own means of expression.
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Liberty is about our rights to question everything.
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In my case, I was stuck there for quite a while. New York is large enough to be a very abstract city, so nobody cares.
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The media is the message. It carries the full intention and the meaning. Once you change it...it's very disturbing.
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It is not an easy job to govern China, I am aware of that. There are crises and emergencies all the time, we might not even be aware of some. But I am afraid we'll have to wait and observe precisely what the government is up to.
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If a master, a wise and experienced man, wields a great weapon, that's beautiful. He can serve peace with it. But if someone's emotions are imbalanced, even if he has the best equipment, he will still mean danger. Modern technology requires calm. You shouldn't trust anyone with a car who has no knowledge about vehicles or roads.
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I loved New York — every inch of it. It was a little bit scary at that time, but still, the excitement was so strong — visually and intellectually. It was like a monster.
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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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Measuring national prestige by gold medals is like using Viagra to judge the potency of a man.
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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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