Top 359 Quotes & Sayings by Ai Weiwei - Page 4

We never really see the global situation as a total situation. Today's political leaders are still lacking of the vision. They very often just try to cope with their own election, their own popularity, solving the problem or selling the ideas to meet their own voters. By doing that, it creates a great imbalance in terms of making deals or treaty or all those things. Even today the borders they're seeing the physical borders are very different from the political borders. Because all those powers are so connected, and you cannot even see whose interest in what move.

I hope that my work expresses my worldview and encourages people to exchange ideas.

Somehow, we [ Tan Dun and director Chen Kaige] were all privileged at the time; we could be outside of China. But at the moment, we had no sense of what the future was going to be like.

Had I to create a name for these times, I’d say it is the age of craziness

I never had a sense of home.

I never had secure, belonging feelings with this society [in China].

After I came back [to China], there was still a long period of time when I felt I had nothing to do.

I think I'm just a traveler. When you walk across a river and there's no bridge, you build one. I'm used to having to deal with Chinese Communist ideology - it's not really an ideology, but a method of control. But China's problems are not just China's problems - they're human problems. Humanity has always worked better when you see it as one.

That's why I always question this sense. The feeling of home really requires a lot of trust. It requires you to identify with it, which I always find myself very contradictory to.

[Shanghai Biennale] has been my attitude for as long as I've been practicing art and other cultural-related activities.

I don't think I was very structured in that society and I don't really believe in personal success, which most Americans believe in.

The rest of the world understands little about China's changes and the possibilities and crises that come with them.

The motivation is really to say people can find the game of getting involved interesting and find the problem and really have the passion and the enthusiasm to solve it and move forward, but that's all I know.

Now I've come to such a mixed culture: America, Europe, South America, Africa. And the politics are changing everywhere all the time and becoming even more unpredictable. There's no such thing as "fixed" culture. China is also becoming more global. Its problems are becoming international problems, becoming German problems, becoming American problems. Nothing is clear-cut. Perhaps I'll find my way - or get totally lost.

[Cultural departments] don't care about culture. Maybe they're the furthest from the people who understand culture.

I think U.S. and China is a big opportunity, to be seen as partner or some kind of strategic partner maybe. But those kind of powers have a way of getting too big, then we'll have competition. And who is going to win the competition if U.S. cannot hold a strong ideology? And even the U.S. would've lost the ground to win.

The museums used to be exhibition halls for government propaganda, and now every city wants to build a museum. A few thousand are to be built in the next few years, all using taxpayer money. But there is no system, no research, no content, no good programs, no good managers.

I don't believe in a sense of home.

China hasn't only existed for one day. Now, the whole nation has become richer and it's become a problem. The problem is universal. The factor is big. Everybody has to rethink the balance of the world and the whole landscape.

Mass production is nothing new. Weren't cathedrals built through mass production? The pyramids?... Paintings can be painted with the left hand, the right hand, someone else's hand, or many people's hands. The scale of production is irrelevant to its content.

Now many enterprises are made by individuals, so the attitude has started to change.

Democracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists.

I have to find a place for my own. I have to search for my own happiness.

The United States is a melting pot. Like John F. Kennedy said, it's a nation of immigrants. But Donald Trump wants to build a fence that clearly makes the statement: "You and I are divided. We're different, and you're dangerous." That kind of thinking stops human, civilized evolution. It's dangerous to create that kind of tension.

...photographs are facts, but not necessarily true... The present always surpasses the past, and the future will not care about today.

Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it.

Everything is selected by the central government without good judgment or an understanding of culture to make it really safe. They will become nobody to maintain their power and be raised to the next higher level.

I never really read Allen Ginsberg poetry, even though I have a book he gave me.

I spend a lot of time talking to journalists.

Growing up, my family was an enemy of the state. I have experienced more disappointment than joy, much more sad stories or desperate conditions.

It [success] is really by mistake.

I curated this show [Shanghai Biennale ], I was by no means trying to shock people or be controversial.

You're still being looked at as somebody who - it's a very complicated issue.

Hopefully, other successes aren't like me. It carries much more meaning to other people; my success story is irrelevant. It doesn't make any sense.

Of course, there [in China] has to be chaos. It has to be crazy, and I don't think there's anything wrong about it except this government, which is really incapable of doing anything meaningful.

I don't like China. Even today, I still feel I have no emotional relations with this place.

The society was so different [in China] - it was a feudalistic society. It didn't come to a point of industrial revolution until twenty years ago.

If I look at it, I would laugh. I don't know how I became successful.

I have always stated I designed the stadium as a toilet seat. I don't care if this is a great cultural event or a national symbol. It has nothing to do with me. It deals with the city.

New York has given me a lot, but I still don't consider it home.

The whole attitude of society has become much more open and realistic. They realize that the only way to make a more democratic and free society is to let different opinions come out.

Dictatorship is a story about death of others who turn out to be you coincidently.

I don't personally feel any association with a kind of culture related to state, or culture related to power, which I think is always disgusting.

If there's the right condition, I always want to express the concept or ideas in a very independent way.

A society is healthy only when it allows its members to discuss their thoughts openly. This is also the only way that a society can gather consensus, let everyone express his or her wish, and foster creativity.

The [China] government has improved in the last years. Of course, the structure is still the same; there's still a one-party system and strong censorship.

I spent a lot of time standing on street corners [of New York City] talking to local residents. I spent time in bookstores and galleries. But most of the time, I really did not have much to do.

Society becomes very destructive.

A lot of the time [in the U.S.], I was thinking about how spending time is always questionable or is always the biggest obstacle in my life.

I lived there [ in New York City] as an artist, but never as a Chinese artist.

For those actors and directors who produce films which are always about the old kingdom or about heroes, you know about the fantasies related to the classics, but there is no real discussion about today's life and no discussion of the real conditions - which is really sickening. They've become part of a conspiracy, collaborators of the crime, which is lying to the general public and trying to hide the kind of criminal acts happening in many cases.

Even though everybody who looked at me would call me a Chinese artist, that's the 1980s. New York in the '80s was not so interesting. I think it's quite narrow-minded. There wasn't much encouragement or opportunities for any artist - not just Chinese artists.

I think Allen [Ginsberg] was a person who's like a child.

Of course, people will call you an old artist or young artist, which is just a character of you. But personally, I don't think my work and my understanding of art is so much related to being Chinese, but the character of that. Maybe it's beyond my own consciousness.

[Being unique] gives so much privilege to people who can make it, rather than having some moral and aesthetic discussions.

I also doubt a man can give really clear reasons for anything.

Maybe [success] is because I'm in China and I'm more open. Maybe it's my independent behavior, or because I participated in certain projects. I have no idea.

In my case, I was stuck there for quite a while. New York is large enough to be a very abstract city, so nobody cares.

I don't think China has professional museums - not in the past, present, or near future.

I never think any place is better than others.