Quote

China has not established the rule of law and if there is a power above the law there is no social justice. Everybody can be subjected to harm. I'm just a citizen: my life is equal in value to any other. But I'm thankful that when I lost my freedom so many people shared feelings and put such touching effort into helping me.

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
People
Freedom
Citizens
Thankful
Lost
Value
Touching
Social
Equal
Citizen
Helping
Effort
Established
Feelings
Justice
Shared
Power
Everybody
Harm
Many
Law
China
Life
Values
Rule
Subjected

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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I don't think I was very structured in that society and I don't really believe in personal success, which most Americans believe in.
Ai Weiwei
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Say what you say plainly, and then take responsibility for it.
Ai Weiwei
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Many people I know - writers, poets - they have all been sentenced not once but sometimes three times after they come out. They serve five or six years, come out another time, and then nine years. Come out again, 12 years. Only because they have a different opinion. They are innocent people, they have beautiful minds, beautiful hearts.
Ai Weiwei
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My image of what a city should be - the super-rich and all the poor and desperate and the people who have some kind of a desire. It's a surviving game, people trying to survive on many different levels.
Ai Weiwei
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There's no single artwork I even want to mention or that I can even really think about it to have any feeling, to be proud of it.
Ai Weiwei
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Liberty is about our rights to question everything.
Ai Weiwei
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I don't think China should care if this crazy old guy should have a show here or not. You have so many museums in the West, and so many shows, you need somebody to show the work, otherwise it's empty.
Ai Weiwei
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I have people working together, doing different things: architecture, art installation, photography, publishing, and curatorial works and design.
Ai Weiwei
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I don't believe in a sense of home.
Ai Weiwei
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I have to find a place for my own. I have to search for my own happiness.
Ai Weiwei
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A nation like China has become one of the biggest production fields for exporting cheap labor, which also re-questions our history and past, re-questions human desire, and the human illusions of the past.
Ai Weiwei
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I grew up in a desert, which has no kind of imagination.
Ai Weiwei
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To the media, I have become a symbolic figure, critical of China. According to the government, I am a dangerous threat.
Ai Weiwei
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If I look at it, I would laugh. I don't know how I became successful.
Ai Weiwei
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Censorship is saying: I'm the one who says the last sentence. Whatever you say, the conclusion is mine. But the internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have the last word – even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice. Such power will collapse because of a whisper.
Ai Weiwei
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To survive, China had to open up to the West. It could not survive otherwise. This was after many millions have died of hunger in a country that was like North Korea is today. Once we became part of global competition, we had to agree to some rules. It's painful, but we had to. Otherwise there was no way to survive.
Ai Weiwei
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What is important is that we actively express our thoughts and wishes, in every realm that we can access.
Ai Weiwei
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Measuring national prestige by gold medals is like using Viagra to judge the potency of a man.
Ai Weiwei
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A small act is worth a million thoughts.
Ai Weiwei
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In the end, I think, the state's rigidity is a function of its own insecurity, its indecisiveness.
Ai Weiwei