Quote

In a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights, anything that calls itself creative or independent is a pretence. It is impossible for a totalitarian society to create anything with passion and imagination.

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
Society
Tyranny
Individual
Independent
Anything
Create
Restricts
Human
Imagination
Violates
Humans
Impossible
Pretence
Passion
Totalitarian
Creative
Freedoms
Rights
Calls

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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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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If I look at it, I would laugh. I don't know how I became successful.
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Politics is like air and water. And you know if there is bad politics. Everyone is polluted. Everyone is unhealthy. See the people walking on the street: how they act.
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I can still wake up the next day and feel that there's something that needs to be done, which always amuses me.
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When you have strict censorship of the internet, young students cannot receive a full education. Their view of the world is imbalanced. There can be no true discussion of the issues.
Ai Weiwei
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I think everybody deserves freedom. Freedom is such an abstract word, but it's all we need.
Ai Weiwei
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I see the Beijing National Stadium as an architectural project. I accepted Herzog and De Meuron's invitation to collaborate on the design, and our proposal won the competition. From beginning to end, I stayed with the project. I am committed to fostering relationships between a city and its architecture.
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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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Creativity is part of human nature. It can only be untaught.
Ai Weiwei
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Growing up, my family was an enemy of the state. I have experienced more disappointment than joy, much more sad stories or desperate conditions.
Ai Weiwei
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[Being unique] gives so much privilege to people who can make it, rather than having some moral and aesthetic discussions.
Ai Weiwei
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As a person, I was born to give out my opinions. By giving out my opinions, I realize who I am. As long as I can communicate, I'm not so lonely. If I cannot travel, or do art, or have company, if they take away all my belongings, it doesn't matter at all.
Ai Weiwei
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That's why I always question this sense. The feeling of home really requires a lot of trust. It requires you to identify with it, which I always find myself very contradictory to.
Ai Weiwei
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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.
Ai Weiwei
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If you don’t act, the danger becomes stronger.
Ai Weiwei
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I don't think my father had a direct influence on me, but I do think, more or less, I was influenced by his independent individualism. And the kind of condition he had when he was in this society - the kind of mistreatment society gave him.
Ai Weiwei
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I saw [Allen Ginsberg] more as an old man who liked poetry and who had a lot of physical and emotional problems. We liked our time together.
Ai Weiwei
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If human rights are supposed to have any meaning, then they have to be discussed openly.
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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I don't personally feel any association with a kind of culture related to state, or culture related to power, which I think is always disgusting.
Ai Weiwei