Ai Weiwei Quotes

Americans are so individualistic, they do not realize their individualism is a communally derived value.

The American culture is pursue your own happiness, follow your dreams. The Chinese side is sacrifice everything for your family; it's all about the group. Those conflicting ideas were always a battle in my head.

An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means.There is no such thing in the country.

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

In America, it is difficult to be your own man.

I was brought up differently than the average American child because the average child is brought up expecting to be happy.

British and American women have very different styles and a different way of living.

I always thought, because America is supposed to be the land of the free, nudity would be part of the norm over there, but it isn't. It's surprising.

The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible.

Each and every Dutchman has his own manner of thinking, his own manners and habits, usage and speech.

Americans are locked into our traditions.

Every hen thinks she has laid the best egg! Can we not all believe as we choose? But the choice of others - what is that to us? Let them alone.

I do think that when you're specifically working in a country like South Africa, you have to be able to be aware of the cultural truth of what people are raised in and believe in and how they function within their society.

I mean it's very hard to meditate and live a spiritual life in America. People think you're a freak if you try to.

You can behave as badly as you like in America. Nobody notices.

The Japanese tend to be far more co-operative and docile and group-oriented. It would be easier to get the entire population of Tokyo to wear matching outfits than to get any two randomly selected Americans to agree on pizza toppings.

First off, I think nudity is taken differently in America, though they did make a fuss in England, too.

I think that may be the biggest difference between Americans and people elsewhere. Unlike Americans, Canadians know that there are places just as real as Canada. It's a self-centeredness that's a very strange thing.

There are conservative values where certain lifestyles are imposed and everybody should have 2.4 children and a dog and a cat and a house and you should feel like God and you should believe in God and you should be a capitalist. I don't buy any of that.

It's very different because the Indians live as if they are their souls and Americans live as if they are their egos.

[H]uman beings...make a limit in their mind of what their potential is. They decide, "I've been told this," or "this is what society tells me," or they've been made to believe something. If every human being actually threw away those thoughts...the potential of human beings is great, it's huge, compared to what they actually think of themselves.

Everyone seems to think I'm very ladylike. That I'm very cultured and intelligent. I drink alot of Diet Coke and belch. I've been known to use the F-word. I've told a few dirty jokes. I arm-wrestle.

Doesn't matter if you're fourteen or if you're eight, there's an incredible vernacular that I do believe has become more and more plausible to talk this way in the public sphere, I think because we live in such a coarse and pornographic era. Years of this has produced a certain amount of misogyny that is just a given of life in America at this point.

The ideology of hardness and cruelty runs through American culture like an electric current.

I just don't think America wants a female host. It's like men don't walk around in skirts in this country. Why change a good thing?