Ai Weiwei Quotes

People with real power never fear of losing it. People with control think of little else.

In real life, what scares me is politicians, corporations and people that think they know what the world should be.

Power resides only where men believe it resides. [...] A shadow on the wall, yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.

Whenever you have people in power, they try to control people. It's not necessarily a bad thing to control people - you can control people for good, you can control people for bad, but you're gonna try and control people.

The power to define the situation is the ultimate power.

What I'd really like to control is not machines, but people.

Power in Washington is simply the perception of power.

The people in this country have always been afraid of power. Now, maybe the powerful are becoming a little afraid of the people.

The silence of peoples is something kings should study.

Only powerful people have liberty.

Power can shape 'truth,' but not forever.

Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.

To persuade is more trouble than to dominate, and the powerful seldom take this trouble if they can avoid it.

I like being powerful. I hope it doesn't go to my head. If somebody's going to have it, it might just as soon be me. There's always power, and it's just a matter of in whose hands it falls.

power is not a thing to be owned. But if you believe that it is such a thing, losing it becomes a possibility to fear. That fear, I think, is one reason for the dark projections of a catastrophic future that are so widespread, in our dual society. The present powerful, being committed to polarization, expect that any new deal will overturn the one that set them in authority; that the last shall be first and the first last, role reversal everywhere, men as slaves, women as masters, in a revolution of contradiction.

Everybody's trying to hold onto some shred of dignity in the process of it all, and, at the same time, never talking about how they don't have the power. No one has the power. So, you know, producers - we always think, "Well, producers are very powerful," but producers don't really have the power.

The power to do things for people is also the power to do things to people.

If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is - and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive.

The basic rule of human nature is that powerful people speak slowly and subservient people quickly - because if they don't speak fast enough, nobody will listen to them.

Work is pushing matter around. Politics is pushing people around.

Power is fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates. Not just by what it takes, but also by what it gives. And powerlessness reaffirmed not just by the helplessness of those who have lost, but also by the gratitude of those who have (or think they have) gained.

It's better to be loved than feared, but if you can't be loved, then fear will do.-Dino quoting Machiavelli

Pierre Bordieu was right: "The all powerful is he who does not wait but makes others wait. Absolute power is the power to make oneself unpredictable and deny other people any reasonable anticipation, to place them in total uncertainty by offering no scope for their capacity to predict."

If one meets a powerful person - Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates - ask them five questions: 'What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?' If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.

This is the power of the powerful to define, to structure, to say, 'This is the way the world works.' It's enormous power. Among the powers of the weak, I think the first one is the power not to believe the powerful.