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Freedom of speech implies the world isn’t defined. It is meaningful when people are allowed to see the world their way.

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
Freedom
Way
World
People
Implies
Meaningful
Defined
Allowed
Speech

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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Overturning police cars is a super-intense workout. It’s probably the only sport I enjoy.
Ai Weiwei
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The society was so different [in China] - it was a feudalistic society. It didn't come to a point of industrial revolution until twenty years ago.
Ai Weiwei
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I’m an artist who is always looking for what is possible. I’m always looking to extend the boundaries.
Ai Weiwei
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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.
Ai Weiwei
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Many people are going to use [Beijing National Stadium], which makes it more meaningful. If we don't design it, somebody else has to design it.
Ai Weiwei
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New York was not a romantic city at [80th]. Nobody knows who you are and you don't have to care about anybody else. It's a very cold city, I should say.
Ai Weiwei
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I don't think China has professional museums - not in the past, present, or near future.
Ai Weiwei
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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.
Ai Weiwei
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The biggest obstacle in interacting with China is the difference in perspectives about basic values. These include issues such as human rights, the concept of law and constitution.
Ai Weiwei
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Widespread state control over art and culture has left no room for freedom of expression in the country. For more than 60 years, anyone with a dissenting opinion has been suppressed. Chinese art is merely a product: it avoids any meaningful engagement. There is no larger context. Its only purpose is to charm viewers with its ambiguity.
Ai Weiwei
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Liberty is about our rights to question everything.
Ai Weiwei
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Chinese citizens have never had the right to really express their opinions in the constitution it says you can, but in the real world it is more dangerous. In the west people think it's a right they're born with. Here it's a right given by the government, and one that's not really practised.
Ai Weiwei
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My typical day is I wake up and appreciate that I can still wake up.
Ai Weiwei
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I think China is laughing about the results of the presidential elections. China, Russia, they all laugh about it. They see how dramatic U.S. has to be put this kind of shame on its own - cannot handle the situation. Or show such a difficulty with this liberal ideas. Men or women created equal. And to defend those very essential ideas.
Ai Weiwei
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My situation gives me certain ideas about beauty or the excitement of life, but that doesn't mean other people can necessarily appreciate it.
Ai Weiwei
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I'm a free man now, except I cannot leave China. You know, I have no desire to travel. I have so many things to do I cannot finish them now.
Ai Weiwei
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The whole Chinese system - not just the political leadership, the military too, the whole power structure, our education system, the whole of society - is suffering from being cut off from the free flow of information. That's why the country can't face up to open competition - unless it resorts to measures like North Korea.
Ai Weiwei
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Say what you say plainly, and then take responsibility for it.
Ai Weiwei
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Dictatorship is a story about death of others who turn out to be you coincidently.
Ai Weiwei
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To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is the reason.
Ai Weiwei