Ai Weiwei

"I see myself not as a leader but as somebody who initiates things or finds the problem or provokes a discussion. You have to be always ready to engage, willing to participate. When events or history happen, you just have to be aware and respond."

"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."

"But censorship by itself doesn’t work. It is, as Mao said, about the pen and the gun."

"At midnight they can come into your room and take you away. They can put a black hood on you, take you to a secret place and interrogate you, trying to stop what you’re doing. They threaten people, your family, saying: 'Your children won’t find jobs.'"

"The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It’s as simple as that."

"China might seem quite successful in its controls, but it has only raised the water level. It’s like building a dam: it thinks there is more water so it will build higher. But every drop of water is still in there. It doesn’t understand how to let the pressure out. It builds up a way to maintain control and push the problem to the next generation."

"But the internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have the last word – even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice."

"This simple form of repression, of using the method of not letting anyone speak, will never succeed."

"The most unfair things that could have happened in a society fell upon a blind man. This is something that no one can accept or explain away with any excuse. Everyone will ask: 'Do we actually have to exist in a society like this?'"

"I will never leave China, unless I am forced to. Because China is mine. I will not leave something that belongs to me in the hands of people I do not trust."

"China has not established the rule of law and thus there is no justice."

"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?""

"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."

"Ich meine, wenn wir aufgeben, dann sind wir Teil des Verbrechens."