Ai Weiwei
Leading Chinese artist, curator, architectural designer, cultural and social commentator and activist.
"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?"
"Any power or structure that seeks to maintain full control and is not open in any way to loosening its power eventually makes itself ridiculous."
"I don’t know about five years from now. I have no plans for that. Maybe I’ll be forgotten by then."
"I want people to see their own power."
"Contemporary art and the [Communist] Party are an impossible situation. It’s like oil and water—they can never mix."
"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."
"A land that rejects the truth, barricades itself against change and lacks the spirit of freedom is hopeless."
"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."
"Anyone who cares about truth should avoid not politics, but Olympic lies."
"Anyone fighting for freedom does not want to totally lose their freedom."