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You can never know what is and what is not powerful, but you can always find out what the powerful people are scared of. A state like China looks so powerful, but they are so scared of the Internet, so the Internet is more powerful than them.

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
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China

More quotes by 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.
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The freedom of speech is an important yardstick for a society's level of civilization.
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Of course, there [in China] has to be chaos. It has to be crazy, and I don't think there's anything wrong about it except this government, which is really incapable of doing anything meaningful.
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If civil society has nobody who protects the law, then what kind of society is that?
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Any design, any city, any kind of craziness or tragedy, it all comes from a long time of preparation.
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The art always wins. Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay.
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New York has given me a lot, but I still don't consider it home.
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Even if I have hundreds of things to do, the disconnected feeling is still there because it is very hard to find a real purpose of life.
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If there's the right condition, I always want to express the concept or ideas in a very independent way.
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If I really have nothing to do, I just watch my cats, take some photos, and go back to my personal blog.
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Warhol came from an ordinary family and he had a profound understanding about capitalism and material culture. He was probably one of the few Western artists - or artists from the United States - that could be considered a true product of his time and brought out that kind of spirit of the culture.
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We should also leave behind discrimination, because it is narrow-minded and ignorant, denies contact and warmth and corrodes mankind's belief that we can better ourselves. The only way to avoid misunderstanding, war and bloodshed is to defend freedom of expression and to communicate with sincerity, concern and good intentions.
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I don't think China has professional museums - not in the past, present, or near future.
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I don't think there is a distinct change, because in the West I'm not a person who can serve his purpose.
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You're still being looked at as somebody who - it's a very complicated issue.
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Only with the Internet can a peasant I have never met hear my voice and I can learn what's on his mind. A fairy tale has come true.
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Liberty is about our rights to question everything.
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Say what you say plainly, and then take responsibility for it.
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My work is always a ready-made... cultural, political, or social, and also it could be art - to make people re-look at what we have done, its original position, to create new possibilities.
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If we all say the same thing, then I think the government has to listen. But because no one is saying it, I become singled out, even though what I'm saying is common sense. It's very essential values that we all have to protect. But in Chinese society, people are giving up on protecting these values.
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