Ai Weiwei on Justice

"Tips on surviving the regime: Respect yourself and speak for others. Do one small thing every day to prove the existence of justice."

"Neither fairness nor justice, neither reality nor humanity can be simulated or manipulated by wires or remote controls."

"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."

"They just don’t trust people. They don’t trust individuals, they don’t trust any change that should serve and benefit people, and they try to stop it."

"I cannot ever accept the kind of conditions where you can sacrifice someone’s rights."

"I spend very little time just doing '“art as art.'"

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

"To protect the right of expression is the central part of an artist’s activity. . . . . In China many essential rights are lacking, and I wanted to remind people of this."

"I think China is in a chaos now and it could be more chaos. It’s an orderly chaos. It’s a party that ruthlessly violates every human’s basic rights to serve its own purpose."

"I always have an attitude. Even if there are no plans, I have an attitude. Perhaps I answered imprecisely before, saying that I am just a person. I am actually a person with an attitude."

"A society that has no ideals, that discards the principles of humanitarianism, that abandons the fundamental rights and dignity of humanity, can only survive by denying truth, fairness and justice."

"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?'"

"The frustration mainly comes from trying to understand what they really want. Also, you cannot understand how can such a large nation maintain its so-called stability by doing something very unlawful. I mean, how can they possibly manage to stabilize the whole social condition by not justice and fairness."

"We need clear rules to play the game. We need to have respect for the law. If you play a chess game but after two or three moves you can change the rules, how can people play with you? Of course you will win, but after 60 years you will still be a bad player because you never meet anyone who can challenge you. What kind of game is that? Is that interesting? This game is not right, but who is going to say, 'Hey, let’s play fairly?'"