Ai Weiwei Quotes

213 Sourced Quotes

Beijing is two cities. One is of power and of money. People don't care who their neighbors are; they don't trust you. The other city is one of desperation. I see people on public buses, and I see their eyes, and I see they hold no hope. They can't even imagine that they'll be able to buy a house. They come from very poor villages where they've never seen electricity or toilet paper.

Ai Weiwei
Very few people know why art sells so high. I don't even know.

Ai Weiwei
I have to respect my life, and free expression is part of my life. I can never really silence myself.

Ai Weiwei
The Sichuan disaster is not the first nor the most wrongful. But all the details of this tragedy will be forgotten, and once again it will be like nothing ever happened. Eventually all these disasters will together create a bizarre miracle called civilization and evolution.

Ai Weiwei
I have no sense of why I lost my freedom and if you do not know how you lost something, how can you protect it?

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

Ai Weiwei
The officials want China to be seen as a cultured, creative nation, but in this anti-liberal political society everything outside the direct control of the state is seen as a potential threat.

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
What can they do besides exile [me] or make me disappear? They have no imagination or creativity.

Ai Weiwei
Consider why the quality of school dinners is declining, even as more and more golf courses are opened.

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

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

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
I see myself not as a leader but as somebody who initiates things or finds the problem or provokes a discussion. You have to be always ready to engage, willing to participate. When events or history happen, you just have to be aware and respond.

Ai Weiwei
I am very much interested in the so-called useless object. I mean, it takes perfect craftsmanship, beautiful material carefully measured and crafted, but at the same time it's really useless.

Ai Weiwei
The art always wins. Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay.

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
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
China might seem quite successful in its controls, but it has only raised the water level. It's like building a dam: it thinks there is more water so it will build higher. But every drop of water is still in there. It doesn't understand how to let the pressure out. It builds up a way to maintain control and push the problem to the next generation.

Ai Weiwei
I always have an attitude. Even if there are no plans, I have an attitude. Perhaps I answered imprecisely before, saying that I am just a person. I am actually a person with an attitude.

Ai Weiwei
In a society where there is no freedom of the press, it is difficult for victims to be noticed. Just take the example from yesterday: I had given a telephone interview to CNN. Then, suddenly, CNN was shut down for a couple of minutes. It was the first time I experienced that my television went totally dead. I realized: Oh my God, it's because of me. This is crazy! Which nation would do that? Maybe Cuba, North Korea, China. But what do they want, what are they so afraid of?

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
Behind every political deal in this country, the first casualties are always the ordinary people, who are barely treated as human.

Ai Weiwei