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I remember one little rainy day I went searching for this apartment and I saw so many people standing on a stoop on the corner in the rain. Later I realized, that was drug traffic. They were all buying drugs.

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
Drug
Apartment
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Corner
Standing
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Stoop
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Rainy
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Rain
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More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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I wouldn’t say I’ve become more radical: I was born radical.
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[Cultural department] understand nothing but bureaucratic daily affairs. They don't care about culture.
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In the end, I think, the state's rigidity is a function of its own insecurity, its indecisiveness.
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Of course, most luxury goods in China are for corrupted officials and their relatives. And that made China become the biggest luxury-goods market. In this kind of dictatorship, in this kind of totalitarian society, it is easy to make deals that you cannot make in a democratic society.
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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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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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The world is not changing if you don’t shoulder the burden of responsibility.
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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.
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Our lives are bound by physical limits, familial ties, political conditions, and geographical restrictions. Individual freedom takes us beyond them all.
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I think U.S. and China is a big opportunity, to be seen as partner or some kind of strategic partner maybe. But those kind of powers have a way of getting too big, then we'll have competition. And who is going to win the competition if U.S. cannot hold a strong ideology? And even the U.S. would've lost the ground to win.
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It [success] is really by mistake.
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If you just turn to your paper or television each day, there are thousands of stories that are much more shocking than the gallery artworks.
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This so-called contemporary art is not a form, but a philosophy of society.
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China hasn't only existed for one day. Now, the whole nation has become richer and it's become a problem. The problem is universal. The factor is big. Everybody has to rethink the balance of the world and the whole landscape.
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I don't think [price] reflects if the work is good or bad.A good artist shouldn't be nervous about that.
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The whole attitude of society has become much more open and realistic. They realize that the only way to make a more democratic and free society is to let different opinions come out.
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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 think it's more important to show your work to the public.
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If there is no free speech, every single life has lived in vain
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We grew up in a very material-lacking socialist society, but today China is a capitalist society. It's very materialistic. It's full of desire and luxury goods.
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