Ai Weiwei Quotes

We live in a bewildering world.

The East is very mysterious to Westerners. Even post-Cold War, it's still an unknown entity.

China is, indeed, in so many ways, not like the West. It is not even primarily a nation state but a civilisation state. Whereas the West has primarily been shaped by its experience of nation, China has been moulded by its sense of civilisation.

The complexity of the world is so overwhelming and so present to everyone.

When I went to Egypt right after 9/11 I was very upset. I used to live in Egypt. I had a lot of friends there. I spent two years teaching there. I had very fond feelings for that part of the world, and the fact that a culture I liked so much had attacked my own culture was really very upsetting to me.

The world that we live in isn't uniform-looking, and the future that we're headed toward isn't uniform-looking.

I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out; Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.

The world is not an unsolved problem for scientists or sociologists. The world is a living mystery.

The world, dear Agnes, is a strange affair.

How do you calculate upon the unforeseen? It seems to be an art of recognizing the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world and thereby a limit to calculation, to plan, to control. To calculate on the unforeseen is perhaps exactly the paradoxical operation that life most requires of us.

China is the greatest mystifying and stupefying fact in the modern world.

It's such an interesting world. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we knew all about everything, would it?

Not only does God play dice with the world He does not let us see what He has rolled.

The world we live in today is very, very diverse. It has extremism on one side, it has incredible liberal aspects to it on the other.

The world is a play that would not be worth seeing if we knew the plot.

We live in a world which in some respects is mysterious; things can be experienced which remain inexplicable; not everything which happens can be anticipated. The unexpected and the incredible belong in this world. Only then is life whole. For me the world has from the beginning been infinite and ungraspable.

Human beings everywhere in the world are affected by the global media now. Still, what I have noticed in the east Asia, in the indigenous world, Alaska in particular, and in back country farm and ranch country, is a higher sense of etiquette, and more respectful manners. Urban middle class cosmopolitan world peoples of all races have become speedy and rude. This is a pretty big generalization though.

When we get into the spirit world, and the veil is withdrawn, we shall then perhaps understand the whys and wherefores.

It was best to believe in all possibilities...there were more mysteries in the world than a man could ever hope to understand.

All over the world, relationships between men and women are very, very tricky and very difficult and you don't learn anything. It's not an exact science, so you can't learn anything. You're always going by instinct and your instinct betrays you because you want what you want when you want it.

The world is like that -- incomprehensible and full of surprises .

Here is a bold embrace of internationalism. Let's join the rest of the world and go metric.

What looked safe was not safe. What looked hard and unsafe was probably safer. Anyway, safe was somewhere else in the world.

What are so mysterious as the eyes of a child?

The standardization and specialization of industrialization was being undermined by globalization. When people in Bangladesh could produce things much more cheaply than anybody could produce them in Detroit, we no longer were the world capital of industrialization.