Ai Weiwei Quotes

213 Sourced Quotes

Measuring national prestige by gold medals is like using Viagra to judge the potency of a man.

Ai Weiwei
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
My blog is an extension of my thinking. Why should I deform my thinking simply because I live under a government that espouses an ideology which I believe to be totally against humanity?

Ai Weiwei
On the Internet, people do not know each other, they don't have common leaders, sometimes not even a common political goal. But they come together on certain issues. I think that is a miracle. It never happened in the past. Without the Internet, I would not even be Ai Weiwei today. I would just be an artist somewhere doing my shows.

Ai Weiwei
Today, the West feels very shy about human rights and the political situation. They're in need of money. But every penny they borrowed or made from China has really come as a result of how this nation sacrificed everybody's rights. With globalization and the Internet, we all know it. Don't pretend you don't know it. The Western politicians—shame on them if they say they're not responsible for this. It's getting worse, and it will keep getting worse.

Ai Weiwei
[People] always tell me, Weiwei, leave the nation, please. Or Live longer and watch them die. Either leave, or be patient and watch how they die. I really don't know what I'm going to do.

Ai Weiwei
If Shakespeare were alive today, he might be writing on Twitter.

Ai Weiwei
Writers, artists, and commentators on websites are detained or thrown into jail when they reflect on democracy, opening up, reform and reason. This is the reality of China.

Ai Weiwei
Every day I think, this will be the day I get taken in again....

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

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 language of communication will always need to be renewed.

Ai Weiwei
They [the government] really want to maintain power. At the same time, they refuse to communicate. They refuse to have good intentions. They refuse to be sincere. How can that last?

Ai Weiwei
I think restrictions are an essential condition in the fight for freedom of expression. It's also a source for any kind of creativity.

Ai Weiwei
China has not established the rule of law and thus there is no justice.

Ai Weiwei
But censorship by itself doesn't work. It is, as Mao said, about the pen and the gun.

Ai Weiwei
Three years after the CCTV headquarters fire [in Beijing in February 2009], human skeletons lie forgotten. Is anyone accountable?

Ai Weiwei
Once you've tasted freedom, it stays in your heart and no one can take it. Then, you can be more powerful than a whole country.

Ai Weiwei
A city is a place that can offer maximum freedom. Otherwise it's incomplete.

Ai Weiwei
A fine line separates Chinese intellectuals and professors from the political gangsters who protect them.

Ai Weiwei
They have to have an enemy. They have to create you as their enemy in order for them to continue their existence. It's very ironic.

Ai Weiwei
The Internet changes the structure of society all the time—this massiveness made of individuals.

Ai Weiwei
I don't want the next generation to fight the same fight as I did.

Ai Weiwei
Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.

Ai Weiwei
My activism is a part of me. If my art has anything to do with me, then my activism is part of my art.

Ai Weiwei
If there is no freedom of expression, then the beauty of life is lost. Participation in a society is not an artistic choice, it's a human need.

Ai Weiwei
Maybe there is something I got from it. Maybe you also start to be clear on certain things.

Ai Weiwei