Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Didn
Come
Industrial
Different
Twenty
Years
Twenties
China
Revolution
Society
Point

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

Image
I also doubt a man can give really clear reasons for anything.
Ai Weiwei
Image
The art always wins. Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay.
Ai Weiwei
Image
Stupidity can win for a moment, but it can never really succeed because the nature of humans is to seek freedom. Rulers can delay that freedom, but they cannot stop it.
Ai Weiwei
Image
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
Image
This so-called fame or being better off doesn't really attract me at all.
Ai Weiwei
Image
Warhol influenced me because of his writing. If I had never read his writings and interviews, I would never have understood his work.
Ai Weiwei
Image
If a master, a wise and experienced man, wields a great weapon, that's beautiful. He can serve peace with it. But if someone's emotions are imbalanced, even if he has the best equipment, he will still mean danger. Modern technology requires calm. You shouldn't trust anyone with a car who has no knowledge about vehicles or roads.
Ai Weiwei
Image
New York is a city where you're so alone, you're an individual, you can disappear. You can make something happen. But it's very different to make something happen in the art world.
Ai Weiwei
Image
My work is always a ready-made... cultural, political, or social, and also it could be art - to make people re-look at what we have done, its original position, to create new possibilities.
Ai Weiwei
Image
We see the tendency in the world to criticise democracy and sometimes even to say that authoritarian countries like China are more efficient. That is very short-sighted. China looks efficient only because it can sacrifice most people's rights. This is not something the west should be happy about.
Ai Weiwei
Image
A city is a place that can offer maximum freedom. Otherwise it’s incomplete.
Ai Weiwei
Image
As a person, I was born to give out my opinions. By giving out my opinions, I realize who I am. As long as I can communicate, I'm not so lonely. If I cannot travel, or do art, or have company, if they take away all my belongings, it doesn't matter at all.
Ai Weiwei
Image
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.
Ai Weiwei
Image
[Cultural department] understand nothing but bureaucratic daily affairs. They don't care about culture.
Ai Weiwei
Image
During the days in detention, I thought most about the moon.
Ai Weiwei
Image
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.
Ai Weiwei
Image
There are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship.
Ai Weiwei
Image
Democracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists.
Ai Weiwei
Image
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
Image
I suddenly realized I was getting ten opening notes a day on my mobile phone, more than when I was in New York. But this is China, where nothing is surprising.
Ai Weiwei