Ai Weiwei
Leading Chinese artist, curator, architectural designer, cultural and social commentator and activist.
"Every day I think, this will be the day I get taken in again . . . ."
"The population is in a constant state of enforced dislocation. So let us hope that a totally new culture will come out of this."
"People have said, if you leave, you may never come back. Or they may not even let you leave. So this is always a cost you may have to pay. But I don’t want to restrict myself: When it happens, it happens. I have to deal with it, but not to prepare for it, because it is a kind of stupidity. If you prepare for it too much, you become a part of it."
"If there is one who’s not free, then I am not free. If there is one who suffers, then I suffer."
"Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one."
"Self-censorship is insulting to the self. Timidity is a hopeless way forward."
"I think by shattering it we can create a new form, a new way to look at what is valuable—how we decide what is valuable."
"They just don’t trust people. They don’t trust individuals, they don’t trust any change that should serve and benefit people, and they try to stop it."
"China has not established the rule of law and thus there is no justice."
"Do they want me to stay? Do they want me to leave? Do they want me to hang myself? To kill myself? What do they want?"
"The Internet is the best thing that could have happened to China."
"Being an artist is more of a mindset, a way of seeing things; it is no longer so much about producing something."
"No outdoor sports can be more elegant than throwing stones at autocracy; no melees can be more exciting than those in cyberspace."
"I don’t see myself as a dissident artist. I see them as a dissident government!"
"I lost all connection with the outside world and was immersed in a world of darkness. I was scared that my existence would fade silently. No one knew where I was, and no one would ever know. I was just like a small soybean—once fallen to the ground, it rolls into a crack in the corner. Being unable to make any sounds, it will forever be forgotten."
"My messages are temporary and shouldn’t be our permanent condition. And like the wind it will pass. We’ll have another wind coming."
"The most unfair things that could have happened in a society fell upon a blind man. This is something that no one can accept or explain away with any excuse. Everyone will ask: 'Do we actually have to exist in a society like this?'”
"Your own acts tell the world who you are and what kind of society you think it should be."
"The Chinese [government] only superficially speaks the language of the international community."
"Chairman Mao was the first in the world to use Twitter. All his quotations are within 140 words."