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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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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
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Happiness
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More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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China and the U.S. are two societies with very different attitudes towards opinion and criticism. In China, I am constantly under surveillance. Even my slightest, most innocuous move can - and often is - censored by Chinese authorities.
Ai Weiwei
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The rest of the world understands little about China's changes and the possibilities and crises that come with them.
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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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.
Ai Weiwei
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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.
Ai Weiwei
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Just look at the statistics: Each university has tens of thousands of applications for students who want to be in art school, but they can only accept a few hundred.
Ai Weiwei
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We move so fast that memory is something we can only grasp
Ai Weiwei
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I think by not letting young people be fully informed, how can they have energy and passion and the right picture of the world? I think that's the true crime.
Ai Weiwei
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I lived there [ in New York City] as an artist, but never as a Chinese artist.
Ai Weiwei
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Because Chinese art is booming, it legitimizes this profession.
Ai Weiwei
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The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It's as simple as that.
Ai Weiwei
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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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Dictatorship is a story about death of others who turn out to be you coincidently.
Ai Weiwei
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Chinese citizens have never had the right to really express their opinions in the constitution it says you can, but in the real world it is more dangerous. In the west people think it's a right they're born with. Here it's a right given by the government, and one that's not really practised.
Ai Weiwei
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We should use this public sphere and redefine - beyond China's borders - what a government is allowed to do, where its powers end and where the realm of a citizen's privacy begins.
Ai Weiwei
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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.
Ai Weiwei
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My childhood was quite extreme. Sometimes I was so weak I could not stand up. But now I am so strong. Life is unpredictable
Ai Weiwei
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To experience poetry is to see over and above reality. It is to discover that which is beyond the physical, to experience another life and another level of feeling. It is to wonder about the world, to understand the nature of people and, most importantly, to be shared with another, old or young, known or unknown.
Ai Weiwei
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It's always the rich and there's plenty to waste, yet still China has a lot of people living in very spare, poor conditions.
Ai Weiwei
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Life is much more interesting when you make a little bit of effort.
Ai Weiwei