Ai Weiwei Quotes Page 2

“Life is much more interesting when you make a little bit of effort.”

“Life is never guaranteed to be safe, so we better use it while we are still in good condition.”

“Maybe being powerful means to be fragile.”

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

“My typical day is I wake up and appreciate that I can still wake up.”

“No autocracy can lead people to believe that they are living in harmony and happiness.”

“No state or society can claim to have established human rights once and for all.”

“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.”

“Overturning police cars is a super-intense workout. It’s probably the only sport I enjoy.”

“People have a tendency to become elite rather than to care about the general conditions of the society, which makes me sick. It's an unbearable condition.”

“Say what you say plainly, and then take responsibility for it.”

“Self-censorship is insulting to the self. Timidity is a hopeless way forward.”

“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.”

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

“The art always wins. Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay.”

“The biggest crime of a dictatorship is to eradicate human feelings from people.”

“The freedom of speech is an important yardstick for a society's level of civilization.”

“The government computer has one button: delete.”

“The internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have the last word – even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice.”

“The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It's as simple as that.”

“The misconception of totalitarianism is that freedom can be imprisoned. This is not the case. When you constrain freedom, freedom will take flight and land on a windowsill.”

“The people who control culture in China have no culture.”

“The purpose of art is the fight for freedom.”

“The world is not changing if you don't shoulder the burden of responsibility.”

“There are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship.”

“This simple form of repression, of using the method of not letting anyone speak, will never succeed.”

“To call yourself a Chinese artist or woman artist or African artist reflects a certain kind of condition. To me, that is not necessary.”

“To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is the reason.”

“We move so fast that memory is something we can only grasp.”

“Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.”