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If a society cannot even support somebody like me, then people ask: Who is under protection then? That's why there is such support for me. It is not because I am so beautiful or I am so charming. People feel: This guy is fighting for us.

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
Fighting
Society
Beautiful
Charming
Cannot
Protection
Feel
Somebody
Feels
Support
Even
Asks
Like
Guy

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That's dangerous for human development.
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To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is the reason.
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All the auction houses care about is the selling of luxury goods.
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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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I think it's more important to show your work to the public.
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The United States is a melting pot. Like John F. Kennedy said, it's a nation of immigrants. But Donald Trump wants to build a fence that clearly makes the statement: You and I are divided. We're different, and you're dangerous. That kind of thinking stops human, civilized evolution. It's dangerous to create that kind of tension.
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I never had secure, belonging feelings with this society [in China].
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I think you can give meaning to any condition you can be poor or unsuccessful or be so-called successful. But I don't think that it would give an individual human being a better condition.
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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.
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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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Modern Chinese culture is weak and lackluster.
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Behind every political deal in this country, the first casualties are always the ordinary people, who are barely treated as human.
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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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After I came back [to China], there was still a long period of time when I felt I had nothing to do.
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The people who control culture in China have no culture.
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There are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship.
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China is at a different stage of development, human rights are violated here much more often. And still, we see improvements even here.
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As a total activity - I practice curating, art, architecture, writing, and publishing all together. I still act as a living creature.
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Even if there have been setbacks during these past years, China is changing. China's society is opening.
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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