Ai Weiwei Quotes

213 Sourced Quotes

They all ask: Why? Why is it that this man's name [Ai Weiwei] can never be typed on a Chinese computer or the whole sentence will disappear?

Ai Weiwei
I want to prove that the system is not working..... You can't simply say that the system is not working. You have to work through it

Ai Weiwei
Freedom of speech implies the world isn't defined. It is meaningful when people are allowed to see the world their way.

Ai Weiwei
My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall. Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don't think art is elite or mysterious. I don't think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate art from politics is itself a very political intention.

Ai Weiwei
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
I think strategically China has come to a very crucial moment. They [the government] have to re-justify themselves. Even the past 20 to 30 years are based on a kind of destructive, suicidal act. Now they are trying to reach a higher level, but I think in any society, culture should have its own rights: not to be touched by the government, not to be promoted by the government, also not to be destroyed by the government.

Ai Weiwei
My messages are temporary and shouldn't be our permanent condition. And like the wind it will pass. We'll have another wind coming.

Ai Weiwei
You can see China still cannot offer any real value to the world except as cheap labor, manufacturer, and its own so-called stability. Besides that, I don't see any creative values and creative mind or thinking [that] can be announced from China. So this is the struggle China has to face in the next decades.

Ai Weiwei
I also have to speak out for people around me who are afraid, who think it is not worth it or who have totally given up hope. So I want to set an example: you can do it and this is okay, to speak out.

Ai Weiwei
They tell us it will be about emotions and friendship, that it will be a night of joy. Who are they kidding?

Ai Weiwei
Block [my blog] if you want, but I cannot self-censor, because that is the only reason I have the blog. We both know this is a game. You have to play your part, and I have to play mine.

Ai Weiwei
During the days in detention, I thought most about the moon.

Ai Weiwei
To what degree does it help us to change our life, or even to sense our existence, to really evaluate why? I think those questions cannot be escaped. Sometimes in history it's more hidden; somewhere these can be very personal and individual questions. But in certain times and certain places, your existence has to be associated with other people's situations. You have to make a reaction to the living conditions. It's not avoidable. You cannot just be blind about what is happening there. Such is the case in China.

Ai Weiwei
One of the reasons religions are widely accepted is spiritual laziness and its resulting fear.

Ai Weiwei
They don't believe in liberty. They don't believe in China before the Communists. There is only one simple, clear task: to protect their control, to maintain their governing. Which is such a pity.

Ai Weiwei
Police in China can do whatever they want; after 81 days in arbitrary detention you clearly realise that they don't have to obey their own laws.

Ai Weiwei
Nothing can silence me as long as I am alive. I don't give any kind of excuse. If I cannot come out [of China] or I cannot go in [to China] this is not going to change my belief. But when I am there, I am in this condition: I see it, I see people who need help. Then you know, I just want to offer my possibility to help them.

Ai Weiwei
Before blogging, I was living in the Middle Ages. Now my feelings for time and space are entirely different.

Ai Weiwei
You see a Party system that crushes down anybody who [has] different opinions, who has different ideas in their mind. Simply to have different opinions can cost someone their life. They can be put in jail, they can be silenced, and they can [disappear]. And the other people would take it, not giving support.

Ai Weiwei
I don't really care that much about if I want to be more successful or less successful in art, because I never think life and art should be separate. What's life if you don't have conversation and joy and anger?

Ai Weiwei
The only reason they put me in jail is my involvement in politics, my criticism of the authorities. Later the excuse for my detention became my tax problem. But internally they never told me anything about it. I don't want to underestimate their intelligence, but up to this day I think what they did is very stupid. In fact, they even helped me in an ironic sense. They gave me a chance to explain what is happening with this system. They provided such a platform for me.

Ai Weiwei
If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future.

Ai Weiwei
Because of the economic crisis, China and the United States are bound together. This is a totally new phenomenon, and nobody will fight for ideology anymore. It's all about business.

Ai Weiwei
Tax crimes should be investigated by the tax bureau, not through secret police detention.

Ai Weiwei
[With] 140 words in Chinese, you really can write a novel. Most of Confucius's sentences [are] only four words, so 140 words [might] take his whole life to write. And you can discuss the most profound ideas related to democracy, freedom, poetry.

Ai Weiwei
Modernism represents a true kind of living. Modernism is not about form or method or the works of a few artists, but rather about a necessary way of living. And only this kind of lifestyle can save China, because if we don't have modernism, then we will die under the grasp of one or another ideology. Modernism at least says that every person is free and needs to honestly encounter his own life.

Ai Weiwei
The Chinese [government] only superficially speaks the language of the international community.

Ai Weiwei
This is a decadent era. Its main characteristic is that it's dependent on lies and cheating. Once it loses this characteristic, it can't survive for even a day.

Ai Weiwei
The language of communication will always need to be renewed.

Ai Weiwei
I definitely know people who are shameless enough to give up basic values. I see this kind of art, and when I see it I feel ashamed. In China they treat art as some form of decoration, a self-indulgence. It is pretending to be art. It looks like art. It sells like art. But it is really a piece of shit.

Ai Weiwei