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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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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
Allowed
Spheres
China
Realm
Citizens
Citizen
Beyond
Realms
Public
Privacy
Use
Borders
Ends
Powers
Redefine
Government
Begins
Sphere

More quotes by 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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New York has given me a lot, but I still don't consider it home.
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A small act is worth a million thoughts.
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[Shanghai Biennale] has been my attitude for as long as I've been practicing art and other cultural-related activities.
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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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Selling high or low doesn't mean anything. It has to do purely with the market.
Ai Weiwei
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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.
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The misconception of totalitarianism is that freedom can be imprisoned. This is not the case. When you constrain freedom, freedom will take flight and land on a windowsill.
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I curated this show [Shanghai Biennale ], I was by no means trying to shock people or be controversial.
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Expressing oneself is like a drug. I'm so addicted to it.
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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
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I hope that my work expresses my worldview and encourages people to exchange ideas.
Ai Weiwei
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In the end, I think, the state's rigidity is a function of its own insecurity, its indecisiveness.
Ai Weiwei
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Only with the Internet can a peasant I have never met hear my voice and I can learn what's on his mind. A fairy tale has come true.
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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All the auction houses care about is the selling of luxury goods.
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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I saw [Allen Ginsberg] more as an old man who liked poetry and who had a lot of physical and emotional problems. We liked our time together.
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.
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This is a very general understanding of art in China, that being an artist can make you money and turn you into a star.
Ai Weiwei