Erich Honecker Quotes

The Cold War is over but Cold War thinking survives.

The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.

For me, the fall of the Wall came at the exact right time because, I mean, I was 17, basically I hadn't missed anything, unlike the generation of my parents, who were deprived of a lot of things. They couldn't travel, and they couldn't really get ahead in their professional careers. So for me, it was perfect timing.

If the purpose of the wall was to destroy Berlin, Herr Ulbricht and his cohorts have erred sadly. Berlin is not only going to continue to exist - it's going to grow and grow and grow. Its ties to West Germany will not be severed.

The Berlin Wall is the defining achievement of socialism.

Shortly afterwards my father told me that he might be going into the Eastern Zone of Germany. At that time my own mind was closer to his than it had ever been before, because he also believed that they are at least trying to build a new world.

We could only solve our problems by cooperating with other countries. It would have been paradoxical not to cooperate. And therefore we needed to put an end to the Iron Curtain, to change the nature of international relations, to rid them of ideological confrontation, and particularly to end the arms race.

For all history up to the end of the Cold War, summit meetings were historic and dramatic occasions, when leaders who controlled the destiny of much of the world met to change the world.

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.

The conflict between communism and freedom is the problem of our time. It overshadows all other problems.

Buy the Grace of God, America won the Cold War. The Cold War didn't end--It was won.

The problem is not so much that they are Communists as it is that they are Russians.

The only thing the East German system taught us was that we should never do it that way again.

Romania, which had the worst dictator in Eastern Europe, Ceausescu, he was a darling of the West. The United States and Britain loved him. He was supported until the last minute.

We needed 40 years to overcome East Germany. Sometimes in history, one has to be prepared for the long haul and not ask after four months if it still makes sense to keep up our demands.

I can understand the Chinese Wall: it was built as a defense against marauders. But a wall such as that in Berlin, built to prevent people from seeking freedom, is almost beyond comprehension.

Berlin has a uniquely haunting nature, symbolic of a problematic system that was created to oppress and divide a nation.

When I was 16, I went to Berlin - West Berlin, since at that time a wall still divided the city - to live for three months with a family on an exchange program.

The safest period of my lifetime was the Cold War, when Europe was more sharply divided than ever.

I think George H.W. Bush was confronted with some huge challenges - the invasion of Kuwait, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Soviet Union - that he managed with great aplomb.

I was born in 1988, one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and people of my generation were taught that utopian dreams are dangerous.

The Cold War began with the division of Europe. It can only end when Europe is whole.

Ahmed Tibi does not recognize the existence of the state of Israel, and letting him into the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is a serious danger to its security.

I am somebody who respects Putin highly, but I'm not somebody who is against America.

Vladimir Putin is a person from a different generation.