It was a commitment to reason, to a sense of beauty

From 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows by Ai Weiwei.  One of his experiences during the Chinese Cultural Revolution when ideological zealotry triumphed over human rights and Classical Liberalism.  

Father’s shelves were packed with literary works, but he had also accumulated a lot of art books. When I was little and not yet able to read the words, I had already begun to enjoy some of these volumes, with their eyecatching covers and illustrations: gilded Virgins, prints of Rembrandt’s bronze etchings, buildings and statues from the Classical and Renaissance periods.  These all gave wing to my imagination. I remember, too, poetry collections by Whitman, Baudelaire, Mayakovsky, Lorca, and the Turkish poet Nâzim Hikmet. I was fascinated by the Picasso engravings in a volume of Paul Éluard’s poetry, and early Chinese revolutionary woodblock prints and traditional window papercuts that Father had acquired in Yan’an. When you turned the pages of the books, they would give off a unique aroma, telling you right away that they were from a different time and place. From an early age, we knew that these books and albums meant the world to Father, for every time he talked about them his face would light up. They helped him forget his worries.

But now, in the current climate, every little fiber of their linen covers posed a danger to us. After several home invasions by the Red Guards, Father decided to burn all his books, and I was his helper. We stacked the books up next to a bonfire, and one by one I tore out the pages and tossed them into the fire. Like drowning ghosts, they writhed in the heat and were swallowed by flames. At the moment they turned to ash, a strange force took hold of me.  From then on, that force would gradually extend its command of my body and mind, until it matured into a form that even the strongest enemy would find intimidating. It was a commitment to reason, to a sense of beauty—these things are unbending, uncompromising, and any effort to suppress them is bound to provoke resistance.