Ai Weiwei Quotes

Neither fairness nor justice, neither reality nor humanity can be simulated or manipulated by wires or remote controls.

I am always trying to find how to get the message through. [In Munich] we custom-made five thousand backpacks like the ones of those students [who died in Sichuan] to construct a simple sentence [spoken by the] mother of a dead student. It was: 'She has been happily living in this world for seven years.'

Very few people know why art sells so high. I don’t even know.

I’ve never planned any part of my career—except being an artist. And I was pushed into that corner because I thought being an artist was the only way to have a little freedom.

The 81 days of detention were a nightmare. I am not unique; it happened to many people in China. Conditions were extreme, created by a system that thinks it is above the law and has become a kind of monstrous machine. There were so many moments when I felt desperate and hopeless. But still, the next morning, I heard the birds singing.

Contemporary art and the [Communist] Party are an impossible situation. It’s like oil and water—they can never mix.

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?

During my detention, they kept asking me: Ai Weiwei, what is the reason you have become like this today? My answer is: First, I refuse to forget. My parents, my family, their whole generation and my generation all paid a great deal in the struggle for freedom of speech. Many people died just because of one sentence or even one word. Somebody has to take responsibility for that.

Every day I think, this will be the day I get taken in again . . . .

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?"

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

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

My work has always been political, because the choice of being an artist is political in China.

The disaster-makers always get away, while the innocent are always punished.

I think right now is the moment. This is the beginning. We don’t know what is it the moment of, and maybe something much crazier will happen. But really, we see the sunshine coming in. It was clouded for maybe a hundred years. Our whole condition was very sad, but we still feel warmth, and the life in our bodies can still tell that there is excitement in there, even though death is waiting. We had better not enjoy the moment, but create the moment.