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People have a tendency to become elite rather than to care about the general conditions of the society, which makes me sick. It's an unbearable condition.

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
Society
Unbearable
Rather
Elites
Makes
Tendency
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Tendencies
Care
Condition
People
Sick
General
Conditions
Elite

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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Mass production is nothing new. Weren't cathedrals built through mass production? The pyramids?... Paintings can be painted with the left hand, the right hand, someone else's hand, or many people's hands. The scale of production is irrelevant to its content.
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Everyone wants an iPhone, but it would be impossible to design an iPhone in China because it's not a product it's an understanding of human nature.
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What is important is that we actively express our thoughts and wishes, in every realm that we can access.
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You're still being looked at as somebody who - it's a very complicated issue.
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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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Many people are going to use [Beijing National Stadium], which makes it more meaningful. If we don't design it, somebody else has to design it.
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Being an artist is more of a mindset, a way of seeing things it is no longer so much about producing something.
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Even if I have hundreds of things to do, the disconnected feeling is still there because it is very hard to find a real purpose of life.
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The whole Chinese system - not just the political leadership, the military too, the whole power structure, our education system, the whole of society - is suffering from being cut off from the free flow of information. That's why the country can't face up to open competition - unless it resorts to measures like North Korea.
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By participating in the society we live in, we understand our conditions and the way we relate to the world.
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You can never know what is and what is not powerful, but you can always find out what the powerful people are scared of. A state like China looks so powerful, but they are so scared of the Internet, so the Internet is more powerful than them.
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Technology is a liberation. I think the information age probably is the best thing to happen to the human race in human evolution. Now you have the equal opportunity to equip yourself through information and knowledge and express yourself as an independent mind.
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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.
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If my art has nothing to do with people's pain and sorrow, what is 'art' for?
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The so-called culture nowadays is only a fake one with a superficial front. It is an empty lie.
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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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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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It [success] is really by mistake.
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Twitter is most suitable for me. In the Chinese language, 140 characters is a novella.
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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