These Berlin Wall quotes will inspire you. Berlin Wall, the wall that divided the German city of Berlin from 1961 until 1989.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging Berlin Wall quotes, Berlin Wall sayings, and Berlin Wall proverbs.
Best Berlin Wall Quotes
- “The Berlin Wall wasn’t the only barrier to fall after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Traditional barriers to the flow of money, trade, people and ideas also fell.” ~ Fareed Zakaria
- “It’s always the small people who change things. It’s never the politicians or the big guys. I mean, who pulled down the Berlin wall? It was all the people in the streets. The specialists didn’t have a clue the day before.” ~ Luc Besson
- “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” ~ Ronald Reagan
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“Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.” ~ John F. Kennedy
- “[Fall of the Berlin Wall] is a reminder that the commitment of the United States, to Europe is enduring and it’s rooted in the values we share; our commitment to democracy, our commitment to rule of law, our commitment to the dignity of all people in our own countries and around the world.” ~ Barack Obama
- “I’m not a prophet, but I always thought it was natural for dictatorships to fall. I remember in 1989, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, had you said it was going to happen no one would have believed you. The system seemed powerful and unbreakable. Suddenly overnight it blew away like dust.” ~ Salman Rushdie
- “The fall of the Berlin Wall makes for nice pictures. But it all started in the shipyards.” ~ Lech Walesa
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“A wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.” ~ John F. Kennedy
- “After the Berlin Wall came down I visited that city and I will never forget it. The abandoned checkpoints. The sense of excitement about the future. The knowledge that a great continent was coming together. Healing those wounds of our history is the central story of the European Union.” ~ David Cameron
- “Socialism’s results have ranged between the merely shabby and the truly catastrophic – poverty, strife, oppression and, on the killing fields of communism, the deaths this century of perhaps 100 million people. Against that doctrine was set a contrary, conservative belief in a law-governed liberty. It was this view which triumphed with the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. Since then, the Left has sought rehabilitation by distancing itself from its past.” ~ Margaret Thatcher
- “I think graffiti is part of Berlin culture. You think about what the Berlin wall meant and how visible that was in everyone’s life. How it was a part of their very identity.” ~ Ian Bremmer
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“I grew up during the Cold War, when everything seemed very tenuous. For many years, right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall, I had vivid nightmares of nuclear apocalypse.” ~ Justin Cronin
- “The Berlin Wall is the defining achievement of socialism.” ~ George Will
- “The world has fundamentally changed. It fundamentally changed when the Berlin Wall came down and the ‘evil empire’ ceased to exist. We are engaged around the world whether we like it or not.” ~ Robert Foster Bennett
- “There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass’ sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.” ~ John F. Kennedy
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“Life punishes those who come too late.” ~ Mikhail Gorbachev
- “At some point he seemed to lose all confidence trying to break down the Berlin Wall. He was still fighting as only Kasparov can, but I could see it in his eyes that he knew he wasn’t going to win one of these games.” ~ Vladimir Kramnik
- “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “It’s a different outlook, and one that I understand. When you are a former member of the Warsaw Pact, when you have lived behind the Berlin Wall, when you have experienced the communist systems that existed in these countries, for them, the West represents hope.” ~ Jean-Pierre Raffarin
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“When the Berlin Wall came down the Americans cried, ‘Victory,’ and walked off the field.” ~ Paul Keating
- “The Berlin Wall go down, that was the most wonderful thing that could happen, absolutely. I celebrated with everybody in Berlin that day when the Wall was down.” ~ Nana Mouskouri
- “I remember an article, I can’t recall who by, it was after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which said that now the Wall was down, there could be no more class war. Only someone with money could ever say such a thing.” ~ Claude Chabrol , Fall of Berlin Wall quotes
- “Ronald Reagan will be remembered for leading the United States during a time of tremendous international transition – the demise of the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall coming down, and the end of the Cold War” ~ Mary Landrieu
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“The fall of the Berlin Wall did more for the progress of freedom than all of the books written by myself or Friedrich Hayek or others.” ~ Milton Friedman
- “Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I’ve had some failures. On the other hand, I also predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of fundamentalist Islam… and I’m not happy to be right in all of those cases” ~ David Brin
- “There are many people in the world who really don’t understand-or say they don’t-what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin!” ~ John F. Kennedy
- “The fall of the Berlin Wall really demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was a bad system, and what subsequently happened in the Soviet Union, that that system was a failure.” ~ Milton Friedman
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“We praise the strength, the patience and the longing of the people who did not stop thinking of freedom and democracy in these dark times” ~ Joachim Gauck
- “The Soviet Union could not exist without the image of the empire. The image of the empire could not exist without the image of force. The USSR ended the moment the first hammer pounded the Berlin Wall.” ~ Boris Yeltsin
- “From the beginning, we failed to overcome Europe’s division. The Berlin Wall fell, but invisible walls were moved to the East of Europe. This has led to mutual misunderstandings and assignments of guilt. They are the cause of all crises ever since.” ~ Vladimir Putin
- “It was the first female-style revolution: no violence and we all went shopping.” ~ Gloria Steinem
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“There was a moment when the Berlin Wall came down and some people felt, “Oh capitalism won. That’s the ideology we can believe in now.”” ~ Matthew Specktor
- “We are living in a world in which developments are harder to predict and one that has become more uncertain. In such a world, you must be prepared for the unpredictable. Nobody predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall or the Arab Spring.” ~ Jens Stoltenberg
- “Conservatives recognize there’s gonna be winners and losers. The communists say that’s not right. There shouldn’t be any losers, and they set about trying to create circumstances where people think nobody will lose. But everybody loses under communism. They eventually have to build walls around countries to keep people in, as in the Berlin Wall.” ~ Rush Limbaugh
- “As one looks back, one sees that the fall of the Berlin Wall opened the door to three developments – the Eurozone, which was crafted around German unification, the free movement of peoples within Europe, particularly people from the new democracies of Eastern Europe, and, more broadly, it opened the door to globalization.” ~ Timothy Garton Ash
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“I remember when the Berlin Wall fell and suddenly intractable problems get solved.” ~ Lucy Walker
- “I have a fear of nuclear annihilation. I’m a child of the cold war: I didn’t live more than 10 miles from a major WarPac nuclear target until the Berlin Wall came down and the CW ended. Knowing you can die horribly at any moment because of decisions made by alien intelligences thousands of miles away who don’t even know you exist – there’s something Lovecraftian about that, isn’t there?” ~ Charles Stross
- “Complaints about the social irresponsibility of the intellectual typically concern the intellectual’s tendency to marginalize herself, to move out from one community by interior identification of herself with some other community – for example, another country or historical period… It is not clear that those who thus marginalize themselves can be criticized for social irresponsibility. One cannot be irresponsible toward a community of which one does not think of oneself as a member. Otherwise runaway slaves and tunnelers under the Berlin Wall would be irresponsible.” ~ Richard Rorty
- “Young people in college were not even born when the Berlin Wall fell, and so they are not really cognizant of the Cold War and what that meant. Now, truly, the genie is out of the bottle and you have the possibility that terrorists … could be stealing a bomb or buying a bomb” ~ Valerie Plame
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“This coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall and Europe coming closer together, and nightlife and techno and ecstasy culture seemed like a very powerful panEuropean movement.” ~ Wolfgang Tillmans
- “I tell you, my fellow Americans, that if we learned anything from the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the governments in Eastern Europe, even a totally controlled society cannot resist the winds of change that economics and technology and information flow have imposed in this world of ours. That is not an option. Our only realistic option is to embrace these changes and create the jobs of tomorrow.” ~ William J. Clinton
- “We always seem to be surprised by events, especially by catastrophes, but also by wonderful events. Look at 1990, the year that the Soviet Union collapsed and apartheid in South Africa collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down. I don’t know anyone who foresaw those events. It seems to me that as a species we are constantly trying to adapt ourselves to the unexpected. In the meantime, we talk as if we are in control, and we’re not. This seems to me to be the truth about the twentieth century.” ~ Doris Lessing
- “The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.” ~ Walid Jumblatt
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“I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting . . . it was the start of a new Arab world.. The Berlin Wall has fallen.” ~ Walid Jumblatt
- “You have won the Cold War. … [Your] underappreciated valor [helped] topple the Berlin Wall, and bring down dictators the world over. … For the past four decades the world behind the Iron Curtain … looked to Americans for hope, and America looked to you to get the job done. Today, the free world says thank you.” ~ Bob Dole
- “”Contemporary art” for me is a kind of historical term that describes the 40 years between the Berlin Wall going up and then coming down. I’m not sure who will come up with a better term to describe art, but I think contemporary art is actually done for.” ~ Liam Gillick
- “I might have arguments with the size of Reagan’s military buildup, but given the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, staying ahead of the Soviets militarily seemed a sensible thing to do. Pride in our country, respect for our armed services, a healthy appreciation for the dangers beyond our borders, an insistence that there was no easy equivalence between East and West–in all this I had no quarrel with Reagan. And when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, I had to give the old man his due, even if I never gave him my vote.” ~ Barack Obama
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“His mouth is a no-go area. It’s like kissing the Berlin Wall.” ~ Helena Bonham Carter
- “More than one branch of the avant-garde, claiming to break with the bourgeois vision and mode of production, remains tied to it in spite of its denials and ex-communications. We are far from having overcome bourgeois thought or practices, despite the socialist “intermission” between the Russian revolution and the collapse of the Berlin wall. The avant-garde has lost its radical nature. On the other hand, “bourgeois theatre” is sometimes subtle enough to flirt with the avant-garde or to make “intelligent boulevard theatre.” ~ Patrice Pavis
- “The legacy of Ronald Reagan will live on forever. I, of course, had the wonderful opportunity of working with him and getting to know him personally. A more wonderful person you couldn’t meet. I think the coming down of the Berlin Wall will always live in infamy. I treasure his friendship and appreciate so much what he did for me personally and for the issue of reducing gun violence.” ~ Sarah Brady
- “I know it feels like two steps forward and one step back, but we are making progress. In my lifetime, I have lived through one World War, I have lived through the end of Apartheid in South Africa, the pulling down of the Berlin Wall. I have experienced what I never thought I would have experienced, which is a pretty workable peace in Northern Ireland, and I experienced a unified Europe – until the Conservative government got its hands on the idea that in order to appease a few back-benchers they would hold a referendum, what a disastrous idea.” ~ Patrick Stewart
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“As I’ve watched the Berlin Wall come down, the cry for freedom in China, and the eastern bloc nations, I rejoice, because I see the bankruptcy of Marxist-Leninism, socialism in this world.” ~ Jerry Falwell
- “President Bush Sr. and Secretary Baker, way back when, told Gorbachev, “We are not going to advance NATO into Eastern Europe. We’re not going to – we’re not going to advance NATO into East Germany if you allow the unification of Germany.” Where is that pledge? Where is the logic behind a military alliance, devised in the time of communism, before the Berlin Wall fell, now being in the Ukraine, in Poland, in Estonia, in Latvia and Lithuania? I don’t understand.” ~ Rashid Khalidi
- “There was a time, with the Berlin Wall down, that [it looked as if] the UN finally could do what it was set up to do, the rivalry between the two camps would dissipate, and we could all co-operate. And then, of course, Iraq came and blew it all apart. These upheavals will always take place in the world, and the design and construct of the UN ideally should be such that it can deal with these upheavals, and possibly influence them, and survive and thrive, but it doesn’t work out that way, because as an organization we are so dependent on the same member states.” ~ Kofi Annan
- “When the Berlin Wall fell and suddenly all those countries had burgeoning democracies, women were still being left out. The big turning point, about ten years ago, was moving from a notion of empowering women to actually looking at where you can make the most difference, and it’s in a girl’s life.” ~ Kathy Calvin
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“I graduated in 1989, and I’d focused almost entirely on the Soviet Union and communism … so when the Berlin wall fell, I was, well, I was screwed.” ~ Anderson Cooper
- “He was a commander in the Russian army at a time when the Russians were our enemies and still part of the Soviet Union . This wasn’t very long ago, Alex.The collapse of communism. It was only in 1989 that the Berlin Wall came down.” She stopped. “I suppose none of this means very much to you.” “Well, it wouldn’t,” Alex said. “I was only two years old.” ~ Anthony Horowitz
- “Atom bombs, something’s wrong. D.E.A sent to Guam. Acid Trips, big fat chics. Purple Finstone Vitamins.All the needy rich are greedy. I find out you don’t need me. Berlin wall starts to fall. I trip out to the wall. Hooray Horrah” ~ Chester Bennington
- “It’s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.” ~ Walid Jumblatt
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“It’s soul force that removed the English from India. It’s soul force that brought down the Berlin Wall. It’s soul force that gave life to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s struggle for civil rights.” ~ Marianne Williamson
- “I believe, if done correctly, eliminating Saddam and liberating Iraq could be the ‘Normandy Invasion’ or ‘fall of the Berlin Wall’ of our generation…the Iraqi people are eager to be rid of Saddam, and there is equally encouraging evidence that republican principles could thrive there.” ~ Pete Hegseth
- “Think of what big governments have gotten up to in this century: not one, but two world wars, the gulag, the holocaust, aerial bombing of civilian population centers, the Berlin Wall, nuclear explosions, the post office. A wicked individual might want these, but he wouldn’t have the cash and connections to get them. A villainous corporation could afford them but has to market the products. The Vietnam draft would be a tough sell for even the most fiendish businessmen. “Get shot! Get killed! Get diseases from foreign women who despise you in their hearts!”” ~ P. J. O’Rourke
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“The fall of the Berlin Wall did more for the progress of freedom than all of the books written by myself or Friedrich Hayek or others.” ~ Milton Friedman
- “So at last the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement and took over Greenpeace so that my friends who founded it left within a year because they’d captured it. Now the apotheosis is at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world.” ~ Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
- “We had the Berlin Wall; we had walls everywhere. But we always looked at the wall as kind of like the outside of the wall is the enemy. Are we looking at Mexico as the enemy? No, it’s not. These are our trading partners.” ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger
