Ai Weiwei vs. Friedrich Nietzsche
Read 20 entries attributed to Ai Weiwei alongside 20 attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche. Compare the wording and topic labels.
This page places 20 entries attributed to Ai Weiwei alongside 20 attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche. Each selection is ordered by stored importance score. These are selections from QuoteLineage, not complete accounts of either author's work.
Topic labels present in both displayed selections: life, philosophy, happiness, humor. Shared labels do not by themselves demonstrate agreement, disagreement, or influence between the authors.
Attributed to Ai Weiwei, entry #136781: "I think my stance and my way of life is my most important art."
Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche, entry #1191: "Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life."
Side-by-Side Comparison
Ai Weiwei
1957
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist. Ai grew up in the far northwest of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been openly critical of the Chinese government and its stance on democracy and human rights.
"I think my stance and my way of life is my most important art."
#life"Only with the Internet can a peasant I have never met hear my voice and I can learn what’s on his mind. A fairy tale has come true."
#truth"Beijing is two cities. One is of power and of money. People don’t care who their neighbors are; they don’t trust you. The other city is one of desperation. I…"
#money"The 2008 Olympics has created an illusion of China to the public and to the outside world. It is so fantastic, so unreal, that the entire meaning of the game…"
#philosophy"Contemporary art and the Party are an impossible situation. It’s like oil and water—they can never mix."
#art"I often ask myself if I am afraid of being detained again. I love freedom as much as anybody else, maybe more than most. But it is a tragedy to live your lif…"
#freedom"Anyone who cares about truth should avoid not politics, but Olympic lies."
#truth"People have said, if you leave, you may never come back. Or they may not even let you leave. So this is always a cost you may have to pay. But I don’t want t…"
#art"To me, to be political means you associate your work with a larger number of people’s living conditions, and that includes both mental and physical condition…"
#life"The art always wins. Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay."
#art"Twitter is the people’s tool, the tool of the ordinary people, people who have no other resources."
#Human Nature"Tradition is only a readymade. It’s for us to make a new gesture—to use it as a reference, more as a starting point than conclusion. Of course, there are ver…"
#art"It’s hard to recover. You become not so innocent. You become, in a way, more sophisticated, which I think you shouldn’t. We should all have more simple happi…"
#happiness"A small act is worth a million thoughts."
#mind"Chairman Mao was the first in the world to use Twitter. All his quotations are within 140 words."
#humor"The think of artists as prostitutes. And in reality it’s true: in the Communist system artists just represent what the power structure seeks them to represen…"
#truth"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?"
#freedom"They don’t believe in liberty. They don’t believe in China before the Communists. There is only one simple, clear task: to protect their control, to maintain…"
#freedom"Life is never guaranteed to be safe, so we better use it while we are still in good condition."
#life"If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future."
#timeFriedrich Nietzsche
1844 – 1900
German philosopher whose work challenged conventional morality and values.
"Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life."
#life"Without music, life would be a mistake."
#Philosophy1889
"The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity."
#love"Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love."
#love"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."
#friendship"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."
#love"The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends."
#friendship"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him."
#Philosophy1882
"That which does not kill us, makes us stronger."
#Philosophy1889
"Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not."
#love"One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too."
#love"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
#Philosophy1889
"One has attained to mastery when one neither goes wrong nor hesitates in the performance."
#justice"Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existe…"
#humor"The concept of greatness is changeable, in the realm of morality as well as in that of esthetics. And so philosophy starts by legislating greatness."
#philosophy"Where there is happiness, there is found pleasure in nonsense. The transformation of experience into its opposite, of the suitable into the unsuitable, the o…"
#happiness"Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick."
#philosophy"He that prefers the beautiful to the useful in life will, undoubtedly, like children who prefer sweetmeats to bread, destroy his digestion and acquire a very…"
#family"To be incapable of taking one's enemies, one's accidents, even one's misdeeds seriously for very long—that is the sign of strong, full natures in whom there …"
#nature"Because of the way that myth takes it for granted that miracles are always happening, the waking life of a mythically inspired people — the ancient Greeks, f…"
#life