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

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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Twitter is most suitable for me. In the Chinese language, 140 characters is a novella.
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[Being unique] gives so much privilege to people who can make it, rather than having some moral and aesthetic discussions.
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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.
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I believe [the architecture firm] Herzog and de Meuron and our collaboration made the product the best it could be.
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I have to find a place for my own. I have to search for my own happiness.
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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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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.
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Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.
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I think it’s a responsibility for any artist to protect freedom of expression and to use any way to extend this power.
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The people who control culture in China have no culture.
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If people are being abused or even killed during an arrest, this is highly disturbing.
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I think art certainly is the vehicle for us to develop any new ideas, to be creative, to extend our imagination, to change the current conditions.
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Even though everybody who looked at me would call me a Chinese artist, that's the 1980s. New York in the '80s was not so interesting. I think it's quite narrow-minded. There wasn't much encouragement or opportunities for any artist - not just Chinese artists.
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It [success] is really by mistake.
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There are many cases and layers of racist behavior in the US - from police treatment to the issues of education and job opportunities. In America, however, such cases are being discussed publically.
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China is an old nation with a colourful history. Its booming economy has triggered an appetite and a curiosity around the world for its art and culture, one that continues to grow. I can, however, tell people that it is a show with no actor.
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I don't think it's worth discussing new directions in the context of Chinese art - there were no old directions, either. Chinese art has never had any clear orientation.
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I think of art as coming from daily life, daily experience. I think it's very important not to have it become work for some kind of elite circle.
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I think by shattering it we can create a new form, a new way to look at what is valuable — how we decide what is valuable.
Ai Weiwei
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I'm not nostalgic about the old city. I don't enjoy it that much. It was just a city with one emperor and the rest of them just rats or meaningless people.
Ai Weiwei