"The American experience influenced my understanding of individuality, basic human rights, freedom of expression and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.“


-Ai Weiwei

posted in experience


The American experience influenced my understanding of individuality, basic human rights, freedom of expression and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.

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"As a person, I was born to give out my opinions. By giving out my opinions, I realize who I am. As long as I can communicate, I'm not so lonely. If I cannot travel, or do art, or have company, if they take away all my belongings, it doesn't matter at all."

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"China has not established the rule of law and if there is a power above the law there is no social justice. Everybody can be subjected to harm. I'm just a citizen: my life is equal in value to any other. But I'm thankful that when I lost my freedom so many people shared feelings and put such touching effort into helping me."

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"The 'Bird's Nest' National Stadium, which I helped to conceive, is designed to embody the Olympic spirit of 'fair competition.' It tells people that freedom is possible but needs fairness, courage and strength."

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"Police in China can do whatever they want after 81 days in arbitrary detention you clearly realise that they don't have to obey their own laws. In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want - not only you, your whole family and all people like you."

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"If we all say the same thing, then I think the government has to listen. But because no one is saying it, I become singled out, even though what I'm saying is common sense. It's very essential values that we all have to protect. But in Chinese society, people are giving up on protecting these values."

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"The Chinese art world does not exist. In a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights, anything that calls itself creative or independent is a pretence. It is impossible for a totalitarian society to create anything with passion and imagination."

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"It evolved from my experience in the fifties, growing up during the McCarthy era, and hearing a lot of assumptions that America was wonderful and Communism was terrible."

-Warren Farrell

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"I feel responsible that everyone has a really wonderful experience and to do the best work possible, and to always know my lines and to always be on time and to bring a level to the show in terms of quality that other people will follow."

-Julianna Margulies

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"Acting is not a mystery. There's nothing that I know that other actors don't know. We all act, we're all actors, we all know the same thing. The only thing that separates us is experience."

-Vincent D'Onofrio

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"Many children are natural fantasists, I think, perhaps because their imaginations have yet to be clobbered into submission by experience."

-David Mitchell

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"I got pregnant at 40 by surprise. It's funny, because when we found out we were pregnant, I said, 'Okay, let's experience that.' You just have to just go with it because it's rare."

-Julianna Margulies

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"At our best, it's a good experience but we do 22 episodes a year, so there are some clunkers."

-Vincent D'Onofrio

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