Last Updated on: 9th August 2021, 11:04 pm
Berlin is the newest city I have come across. Even Chicago would appear old and gray in comparison.– Mark Twain
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
I still keep a suitcase in Berlin. – Line from a song Marlene Dietrich
All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner! – John F. Kennedy’s famous Ich bin ein Berliner speech as given in West Berlin in June 1963
My father is German; my mother is African-American. Growing up, I visited my grandparents in Berlin a lot. I would not see any other person of color for three weeks. People would stare. They would say things like, ‘Oh, you look like chocolate – I want to eat you up! – Zazie Beetz
My first visit to West Berlin was in February 1983. The drive through East Berlin, the fact that West Berlin was surrounded by a wall that was more than 100 miles long – the absurdity and intensity of it really knocked me out.– Henry Rollins
Berlin is like being abroad in Germany. It’s German, but not provincial.– Claudia Schiffer’s quote about Berlin tells us what the international supermodel thinks of the city
I like museums in Berlin a lot, especially in the eastern part. They’re extraordinarily good. – Elliott Erwitt
Berlin, the greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine. – David Bowie
Berlin is a city of leafy boulevards, grand Neoclassical buildings, world-class art, glitzy shopping arcades, and funky graffitied neighborhoods with gourmet street food. It’s big and bombastic – the showcase city of kings and kaisers, of the Fuhrer and 21st-century commerce. – Rick Steves, Rick Steves Berlin
Berlin lacks everything that makes a bit city. It has no financial district like Manhattan or London, no venerable, centuries-old cathedral like Cologne or Paris, no notorious nightlife district like Hamburg. Even Berline’s “Eiffel Tower” – the aforementioned Radio Tower – is merely a modest copy of the Paris original. – Peter Schneider, Berlin Now: The Rise of the City and the Fall of the Wall
Berlin is poor, but sexy! – Klaus Wowereit, former Mayor of Berlin
Nobody had forgotten anything here. In Berlin, you had to wrestle with the past, you had to build on the ruins, inside them. It wasn’t like America where we scraped the earth clean, thinking we could start again every time.– Janet Finch, White Oleander
It isn’t all that easy to answer the question of why, for some time now, Berlin has been one of the most popular cities in the world. It’s not on account of its beauty, for Berlin is not beautiful; Berlin is the Cinderella of European capitals.
Gazing out from a roof deck here, you won’t see anything like the domes of Rome, the zinc roofs of Paris, or the architectural canyons of New York. There is nothing spectacular, in any way exciting – or even atrocious – about the view…What unfolds before the viewer is a homogenous cityscape of four-to-six-story buildings whose red pitched roofs didn’t originally come equipped with penthouses or sumptuous roof decks. It was only thirty years ago, not long before the fall of the Wall, that West Berliners discovered that life above the city’s chestnut and linden trees was significantly better than life in their shadow. Tentatively, they began to carve windows and terraces into the roofs. This is where they now dwell, at a modest height, between the occasional hotel and office high-rise, whose architecture on the whole seems to have been inspired by a shoe box stood on its end. – Peter Schneider, Berlin Now: The Rise of the City and the Fall of the Wall
Beyond its tangible sights and its enthralling history, Berlin is simply a pleasurable place to hang out. A recent mayor called it “poor but sexy” – a slogan that became a hit on local T-shirts. Berlin is captivating, lively, fun-loving – and easy on the budget. The city vibrates with an anything’s possible buzz. It’s a magnet for young expats from around the world who want to live in a dynamic and trendy city, but can’t afford London rents. Entire neighborhoods ahve been overtaken by Americans, Brits, and Aussies – many of whom get by just fine without ever bothering to learn German.– Rick Steves, Rick Steves Berlin
Berlin was charismatic in the roguish way of a love… a lover who was a little dangerous in ways that didn’t always show, keeping you a bit on edge, a bit in love and endlessly forgiving because he made her feel that she was exactly where she was meant to be… Berlin made you like who you were when you were there, as if everything worth being a part of in the world – all those modern ideas about sex and art and women; all that possibility – was right there, in its dark, beating heart. – Whitney Otto, Eight Girls Taking Pictures
…when natives of New York, Tel Aviv, or Rome ask me where I’m from and I allude to Berlin, their eyes instantly light up with curiosity, not to say enthusiasm. Without the slightest hesitation, they’ll go on to tell me about their most recent or upcoming trip to Berlin – yet won’t be able to tell me why they have fallen in love with this city of all paces. They may bring up the ritual word “beautiful,” but it doesn’t really capture what it is that attracts them to the city. Mention the name of any other, far more beautiful European city and you won’t get the same reaction.– Peter Schneider, Berlin Now: The Rise of the City and the Fall of the Wall
Whereas the slums in Hamburg are the slums of its sailors, Berlin is a big slum. – Kathy Acker, Eurydice in the Underworld
When I did go back to visit Berlin, always at Christmastime, the trips were too short and too rushed. I’d haunt old neighborhoods whose streets I knew as well as the back of my hand and go looking around curiously in new ones, marveling at how the city managed to be so familiar and so foreign to me at the same time. In one half of the city it sometimes felt like I had never left. In the other half a whole new world lay waiting to be discovered. The new Berlin, the one that had Mitte at its center and not Charlottenburg, was a place I didn’t really know and certainly didn’t recognize, its old apartment buildings sharing space with shiny new developments, fancy boutiques, and studiously hip coffee bars. It was strange to realize that there was a new generation of people in Berlin now whose concept of the city, their city, was entirely different than mine. I was relieved when I visited my mother and saw the newspaper stores, sausage stands, and Italian restaurants in her neighborhood that had never closed, had never been replace by anything else.– Luisa Weiss, My Berlin Kitchen: Adventures in Love and Life
I realized that it’s all really one, that John Lennon was correct. We utilize the music to bring down the walls of Berlin, to bring up the force of compassion and forgiveness and kindness between Palestines, Hebrews. Bring down the walls here in San Diego, Tijuana, Cuba. -Carlos Santana
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
People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time. -Barack Obama
All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’ -John F. Kennedy
I find it a bit sad that there is no photo of me hanging on the walls in the Berlin Museum at Checkpoint Charlie. -David Hasselhoff
Some people go to Berlin to get more cutting edge; I went and started wearing lederhosen and going to visit baroque palaces. -Rufus Wainwright
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin -Leonard Cohen
But with the Berlin, I was able to allow him to get near, but not quite near enough, and I knew where to draw the line with the fortresses I had set up. -Vladimir Kramnik
The particular feature of Berlin – well, all you need to do is look at the map: the geographical position of the city right in the heart of Europe, and the separation of the most powerful two blocs we’ve ever had in history, which went all the way through Germany. -Markus Wolf
No one can compare us to the apartheid regime. It’s not like in South Africa between the blacks and the whites who belong to the same nation, or in Berlin where you find parents living on the eastern side and their children in the western side. -Silvan Shalom
I’ll never forget the first screening at the Berlin Film Festival. As soon as the film ended there was an outbreak of booing, which made us look at each other with some surprise. -John Schlesinger
Even in November 1938, after five years of anti-Semitic legislation and persecution, they still owned, according to the Times correspondent in Berlin, something like a third of the real property in the Reich. -Arthur Bryant
We feel very honored to have been offered the responsibility to host this great event, Berlin is a wonderful city that is developing at a tremendous rate, and this decision means that we can now prepare to welcome the world’s best athletes to a fascinating place. -Otto Schily
Poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, or secrets from a scientist in Pakistan could help build a bomb that detonates in Paris. The poppies in Afghanistan become the heroin in Berlin. The poverty and violence in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow. -Barack Obama
The plan shows that the twenty million people in the German democratic Republic and in the democratic sector of Berlin think only of peace, and that they are working for freedom and peaceful prosperity. -Walter Ulbricht
In Berlin I especially enjoyed the orchestral concerts, and I attended a large number of them. I formed the acquaintance of a good many musicians, several of whom spoke of my playing in high terms. -James Weldon Johnson
The crucial point is always the own cost structure. Therefore I created a Low Cost alliance with air Berlin. -Niki Lauda
Only through acknowledgment of the erasure and void of Jewish life can the history of Berlin and Europe have a human future. -Daniel Libeskind
The alliance with air Berlin is attractive for me. I can use the whole sales network of the air Berlin and 24 percent of my own airline at air Berlin sold. -Niki Lauda
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
I had only that one picture, Hitler, the Beast of Berlin, in which I had a part big enough to impress anyone. I tried for better roles over and over again -Alan Ladd
In Germany air became generally accepted Berlin in this area. It operated with 45 airplanes within the Low Cost range from Germany, and is one the most successful carriers in Europe. -Niki Lauda
I remember Berlin. Berlin to me was the star of the film. I loved for six months that we filmed there. -Marton Csokas
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 did a concert… in September with the Berlin Philharmonic… They’re great musicians, and there’s always something to learn from them. -Cecilia Bartoli
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
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
I had been involved in U.S. intelligence in Berlin, Germany, while in the military and had worked with a contact with the Central Intelligence Agency office there. -George J. Mitchell
When I went back to visit my native Berlin after World War II, I noticed that the only thing I really remembered from my childhood Berlin days is the shoe store. -Lukas Foss
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
Well, they didn’t lack for topics after Hiroshima. Why should 9/11 slow them down? I know it got a lot of press, but it’s just a few large buildings and aircraft, it’s not like D-Day and the Seige of Berlin. -Bruce Sterling
He was very concerned about his children potentially being kidnapped or attached, and that’s why they were covered up. When he went to Berlin zoo, there were 200 photographers. -Martin Bashir
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
I worked on scores. I went to the musical library in Berlin which is very famous. I discovered that we had scores of Beethoven, printed scores of Beethoven, that are full of mistakes. Not the wrong or false notes, but the wrong dynamic, understandable things. -Kurt Masur
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
Whoever lives in Berlin note, and doesn’t die of Liberalism, will never die of vexation! -Ferdinand Lassalle
I create my own lyrics. I have a great band. I have a drummer from East Berlin. -Nina Hagen
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
I liked Germany; I’m not into Berlin, it’s too huge and empty and imposing, but Munich was good. -Graham Coxon
I was always drawn to Broadway musicals, and obviously composers like Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin and Porter were writing music that I found wildly impressive. -Marvin Hamlisch
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
With the Berlin I was able to set up a fortress that he could come near but not breach. -Vladimir Kramnik
I studied German at school. I lived in Berlin for two years and had a German girlfriend for five years, so I don’t find speaking German particularly difficult. Singing was slightly more difficult. -Martin Gore
The Berlin Defence suited my strategy for the match. I had a defensive strategy – Actually, I had in my pocket some other sharper stuff to fall back on – but first I wanted to try the defensive strategy with Black and it worked so well. -Vladimir Kramnik
I was lucky because on the morning after the burning of the Reichstag I left my home very early to catch a train to Berlin for the conference of our student organization and that is the only reason why I escaped arrest. -Klaus Fuchs
Born Berlin 1931, Germany, father a British diplomat, mother an American artist. Educated at various schools all over the world. 1958 Settled down to live in London. 1966 Became interested in photography through photographing my young children. No formal training. -Fay Godwin
The church of St. Peter at Berlin, notwithstanding the total difference between them in the style of building, appears in some respects to have a great resemblance to St. Paul’s in London. -Karl Philipp Moritz
Berlin is liberation. Architecture, man! -Michelle Rodriguez
And of course I like Berlin a lot. It’s such an interesting city -Daniel Libeskind
When you come to Germany as a Jew you have an uneasy feeling, but I’ve always felt okay in Berlin. -Mel Brooks
Berlin is my favourite city. -Logan Lerman
I did a butterfly show in Berlin, and we had a guy who’s an expert on butterflies; who bred them all and who looks after them all in the space. -Damien Hirst
No matter what happens to me and my career in the future, Berlin is always going to be my hometown. -Alexandra Lara
Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster. This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man’s life, detail is always welcome. -Vladimir Nabokov
Sometimes, because of its immediacy, television produces a kind of electronic parable. Berlin, for instance, on the day the Wall was opened. Rostropovich was playing his cello by the Wall that no longer cast a shadow, and a million East Berliners were thronging to the West to shop with an allowance given them by West German banks! At that moment the whole world saw how materialism had lost its awesome historic power and become a shopping list. -John Berger
Chicago is constantly auditioning for the world, determined that one day, on the streets of Barcelona, in Berlin’s cabarets, in the coffee shops of Istanbul, people will know and love us in our multidimensional glory, dream of us the way they dream of San Francisco and New York. -Mary Schmich
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
When the Berlin Wall came down the Americans cried, ‘Victory,’ and walked off the field. -Paul Keating
I hear it said that West Berlin is militarily untenable – and so was Bastogne, and so, in fact, was Stalingrad. Any danger spot is tenable if men – brave men – will make it so. -John F. Kennedy
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. -John F. Kennedy
Look at what has occurred in history. When the Berlin Wall fell, it was not surprising, but it was unexpected. Who predicted the Arab Spring? Nobody expected it, but all the ingredients were there. I think all the ingredients are also there for Quebec to become a country. But when? That’s another question. -Gilles Duceppe
I remember when the Berlin Wall fell and suddenly intractable problems get solved. -Lucy Walker
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades. All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words Ich bin ein Berliner. -John F. Kennedy
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
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
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
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
I don’t believe there is anything in the whole earth that you can’t learn in Berlin except the German language. -Mark Twain
As we say in Berlin, there are many ways to bake a parrot. -Erik Spiekermann
There are several really interesting clocks in Berlin. -Jim Sanborn
I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers. -Viktor E. Frankl
Germany is a country that has absolutely had to since the Second World War ask itself massive moral questions. And it’s reforged its identity based on culture. I mean, the amount of artists living and working in Berlin is unparalleled. It’s one of the strongest economies, not only in Europe, but globally, and it’s because of its understanding of the importance of culture. -Cate Blanchett
But Hitler didn’t strive for the annihilation of the Jews – he stressed that fact in public life and in the newspapers. Hitler merely said at the beginning that Jewish influence was too great, that of all the lawyers in Berlin, eighty percent were Jewish. Hitler thought that a small percentage of the people, the Jews, should not be allowed to control the theater, cinema, radio, et cetera. -Franz von Papen
Isherwood did not so much find himself in Berlin as reinvent himself; Isherwood became a fiction, a work of art. -Ian Buruma
If a man, in a lifetime of 50 years, can point to six songs that are immediately identifiable, he has achieved something. Irving Berlin can sing 60 that are immediately identifiable. Somebody once said you couldn’t have a holiday without his permission. -Sammy Cahn
It is a question in that case of breaking up one piece of art, and whether that piece of art can be as best as possible put back together. So it’s an argument to say, maybe that’s one of those instances, like the bust of Nefertiti, I think that should be given back [Egyptian piece currently in Neues Museum in Berlin]. It’s one of those pieces you look at and think that would probably be the right thing to do. -George Clooney
An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an hour away from fundamentalism. -Daniel Barenboim
I am a bohemian person. I don’t speak German, and I live in a foreign country where all the signs are in German. I did that deliberately. I’m like a ghost. Look at how much media and advertising you’re subjected to, this mindless chatter of advertising. I just block it out so effortlessly because it’s all a foreign language to me. It’s really a good thing for my head, living in Berlin. -Anton Newcombe
The events in Prague, together with the Berlin blockade, convinced the European recipients of American economic assistance that they needed military protection as well: that led them to request the creation of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which committed the United States for the first time ever to the peacetime defense of Western Europe. -John Lewis
I went to Berlin and Warsaw and Kraków to do research. Right after we got started, I had already booked this trip, so I went. Seeing the history and the posters, and hearing from the guy certain phrases and words and images, it’s stunning how much they’re playing from the handbook of the little mustache that isn’t Chaplin. With Rudy Giuliani as Mussolini. -Joss Whedon
To those who charge that liberalism has been tried and found wanting, I answer that the failure is not in the idea, but in the course of recent history. The New Deal was ended by World War II. The New Frontier was closed by Berlin and Cuba almost before it was opened. And the Great Society lost its greatness in the jungles of Indochina. -George McGovern
My grandfather had been a well-known judge in Berlin. -Arnon Goldfinger
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
I’ve outdone anyone you can name – Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500. -James Brown
Isaiah Berlin once said that there are two kinds of writers, hedgehogs and foxes. He said the fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows just one thing. So Shakespeare is a typical fox; Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are typical hedgehogs. Now, I’m a typical hedgehog. I know just one thing, and I repeat it over and over again. I try to approach it from different angles to make it look different, but it’s the same thing. -Colin Wilson
I hold that this must be said, for treaties only make sense when concluded by honor-loving peoples and honor-conscious governments. Germany wishes to establish honest relations with the peoples of neighboring countries. We have done this in the East, and I believe that not only Berlin but Warsaw as well will rejoice in the decontamination of the atmosphere brought about through our joint efforts. -Adolf Hitler
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
We have to find ways in which, collectively, we agree there’s some things that government needs to do to help protect us, that in this age of non-state actors who can amass great power, I want my government – and I think the German people should want their government – to be able to find out if a terrorist organization has access to a weapon of mass destruction that might go off in the middle of Berlin. -Barack Obama
The Freedom Bell in Berlin is, like the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, a symbol which reminds us that freedom does not come about of itself. It must be struggled for and then defended anew every day of our lives. -Angela Merkel
When I come to a new city is I combine: I say, well, it’s like Barcelona and Edinburgh, though I can’t imagine what that would be. But Toronto, the last few times I’ve been here, what always comes up is Chicago and West Berlin. It’s a big, sprawling city beside a lake, of a certain age and a certain architectural complexity. But the high-end retail core looks more like West Germany than the Magnificent Mile. Yonge Street is like K-Damm. There’s an excess of surface marble and bronze: it’s Germanic and as pretentious as pretentious can be. -William Gibson
I’ve never done a [Berthold] Brecht. In the 1960s when the Berliner Ensemble came over [to England] with Helene Weigel [Brecht’s second wife], I saw all the Berlin actors. It was an amazing time, very exciting early 1960s. -John Hurt
Whereas the slums in Hamburg are the slums of its sailors, Berlin is a big slum. -Kathy Acker
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 organisation we are so dependent on the same member states. -Kofi Annan
I met with many of – a number of [Syrian] refugees in Berlin the other day, and I was struck by how educated, intelligent, and patriotic they are. They want to go back. They love their country. And there are so many of them still in Jordan and in refugee camps in Lebanon and in Turkey, that if you could create the climate within which they could begin to come back, I believe there is such a history of secularism within Syria, even tolerance within Syria, that if we can deal with ISIL, yes. That’s the key. And with ISIL there, not a chance. -John F. Kerry
This movie [Don Jon] played at Sundance and South by Southwest and Berlin. And it just played – well…by the time it played at Toronto recently, it was already done. But getting to watch it with a thousand people is hugely informative. -Joseph Gordon-Levitt
With The Reader, I’d just be shattered at the end of every day really. I wouldn’t really want to talk. We kept saying, because we were in Berlin: “If we get back at a decent hour, let’s go and have a glass of wine.” We’d always think it would be a great idea, but then get to the end of the day and then go [acts drowsy and blabs]. It was very difficult for everybody. -Kate Winslet
I know from my conversations with people in the administration that every world leader that Obama met in Berlin, in Peru, in Athens was extremely alarmed by Trump’s election. That very much includes Angela Merkel. -David Remnick
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
Berlin is a very edgy place, a very cosmopolitan place. It’s a place where completely different ideas and cultures come together and clash in a very warm way. In a very warm-hearted way. -Ian Bremmer
Vietnam, really more accurately, Laos, was almost after Berlin the top problem at the beginning of the Kennedy Administration in ’61, foreign problem. -McGeorge Bundy
Of course the Silicon Valley is unique and Berlin is not yet comparable. But of all the different cities that are building a startup infrastructure, Berlin is the one with the most similar energy. -Mark Zuckerberg
Moammar Gadhafi is the man that killed those Americans over Lockerbie, Scotland. Moammar Gadhafi is also the man that bombed that cafe in Berlin and killed those Marines. And you want to know why Moammar Gadhafi started cooperating on his nuclear program? Because we got rid of Saddam Hussein. And so he got scared that he would be next, and that’s why he started cooperating. -Marco Rubio
I’m from East Berlin. I grew up in the Bertold Brecht, Kurt Weil tradition, also in the old hippie tradition. -Nina Hagen
In Freethinkers Hall, which before the Nazi resurgence was the national headquarters of the German Freethinkers League, the Berlin Protestant church authorities have opened a bureau for advice to the public in church matters. Its chief object is to win back former churchgoers and assist those who have not previously belonged to any religious congregation in obtaining church membership. The German Freethinkers League, which was swept away by the national revolution, was the largest of such organizations in Germany. It had about 500,000 members. -Adolf Hitler
Berlin definitely has one of the most vibrant of the startup scenes that I have seen. Not really just across Europe, but across the whole world in terms of cities. It’s an interesting dynamic. -Mark Zuckerberg
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
What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them. -Frank Rich
In a lot of ways Berlin is a symbol for me of Facebook’s mission: bringing people together, connecting people and breaking down boundaries. -Mark Zuckerberg
God Bless America started to become an almost ritualistic incantation at the end of political speeches really with Ronald Reagan. It appears occasionally before, but it was not that common. And of course since it was a song that wasn’t written by Irving Berlin until the 20th century (laughter), none of the 19th century presidents said God Bless America at the end of speeches, either. I think that the symbolism which suggests that everybody is religious and that even presidents who believe in church and state feel obliged to do this. -Susan Jacoby
Great music can come from anywhere around the globe. And there has always been a music business. It just wasn’t recorded, nor was it centered in New York, London, Los Angeles or Nashville but rather St Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin, Milan and Paris. -Seymour Stein
And a united Europe will also manage to send hundreds of thousands of migrants, who don’t have the right to asylum, back to their homelands. Though that, given the number of flights necessary, would be of a scale reminiscent of the Berlin Airlift. -Paolo Gentiloni
Usually the German translators do something terrible, especially with Tom Wolfe, which is that they make it local. So if the characters are from Harlem, the translators put all this Berlin slang into their mouths, and that’s just terrible. You cringe when you read that. But there really is no good solution to the problem, except learning English. -Daniel Kehlmann
Very few people actually saw Andy’s films like Chelsea Girls where he filmed seven hours, ran it on two screens, where each scene was in a different room at the Chelsea Hotel with these people he called ‘Superstars” who were basically super-exhibitionists – the guy in one room high on LSD talking about masturbation, Brigid Berlin in another room playing a lesbian and shooting up people with amphetamines right through their jeans, it was all real and they were really doing it (though Brigid is now a proper lady), but you know Andy really did pre-date reality TV. -Bob Colacello
Brian Eno and Robert Fripp’s foray into some artful excursions into some ethereal electric experiments. There was a lot curious activities emerging in London, Amsterdam, and Berlin back then developing some fiercely fuzzy of synth-like effects way outside the norm which really blew the lid off things. -Billy Gibbons
This was an era where I was going out every night seeing Sparks, Berlin, Duran Duran, and Split Enz. Amazing acts doing really weird stuff, and I was very open to music and letting it transform me. -Margaret Cho
I want to do my Blade Runner, which is like a future Berlin film, which is like a thriller, but it’s much deeper characters, I think. -Duncan Jones
Chocolate and candy. That’s what we brought in to our friends. We worked in East Berlin with other artists who were smuggled out to come work in the Western Bloc. It was extraordinary because people in East Berlin just wanted to know what was happening. Music. Fashion. The news. All of the things we get every day. -Whoopi Goldberg
I have my own charity organization in Berlin called Ruckenwind, which supports kids from – ya – not ideal backgrounds. -Paul van Dyk
London has always been open to trade, people, ideas. We have to keep that. I want to compete not just with New York, Paris, Berlin… the ten fastest growing cities in the world are in China. How do we compete with them? We have to attract investment and we have to compete on skills. -Sadiq Khan
The stubborn stance of some European governments on the refugee question is a reprisal less aimed at Angela Merkel or (Vice Chancellor) Sigmar Gabriel than at certain people on Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin. -Martin Schulz
When we were negotiating the ongoing financial period in 2013, I talked myself hoarse. London and Berlin in particular insisted on reducing the budget. So we – to the applause of German journalists – made cuts to central future-oriented areas and slashed the budget for development aid, research and technology. -Martin Schulz
The hardest thing about Berlin is letting it belong to other people. -Darryl Pinckney
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
Film is my passion. I had no money, after Human Zoo. I was completely broke. It was horrible. My film was in Berlin on opening night, but I couldn’t even get to Berlin. -Rie Rasmussen
Ironically, even the fashion in New York or Paris or Milan or whatever, or music in Berlin, or art in, I don’t know, Madrid – all these scenes come and go. Everything leads back to Hollywood. -Nicolas Winding Refn
I can’t see any hope but a second front. The psychological effect would be great, even if they could not wade all the way to Berlin in 15 to 20 minutes. -Bess Truman
My first visit to West Berlin was in February 1983. The drive through East Berlin, the fact that West Berlin was surrounded by a wall that was more than 100 miles long – the absurdity and intensity of it really knocked me out. -Henry Rollins
Photography today is accomplishing a lofty mission in which every German should collaborate by buying a camera. The German people is ahead of every other in the technical domain and, thanks to its exceptional qualities, the small camera has conquered the whole world… Much is at stake here from the point of view of popular consumer goods and, furthermore, photography has a particularly important political role to play. (Addressing the Berlin Photography Fair, 1933) -Joseph Goebbels
I was particularly drawn to Berlin because of its literal, concrete division. Two halves making a whole, or two entities that were altered doubles of each other? Twins that had been separated and kept in neighbouring houses and raised according to different sets of rules as a social experiment? It was irresistible as a metaphor for division in the mind, for a split personality. -Nicholas Royle
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
During the cold war, West Berlin was an exclave – a tiny outpost of liberalism surrounded by people who want to crush it. It was like Austin, Texas. -Craig Ferguson
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
In the, uh, ’30s and ’40s, the Brill Building was the hub of, uh, musical activity in Tin Pan Alley in New York City. I believe Irving Berlin was there, and uh, and everything just centered around there. -Al Kooper
I spent time on set in New York and Berlin sitting next to Steven Spielberg while he worked, which was the biggest thrill of my life. -Matt Charman
There were two kinds of physicists in Berlin: on the one hand there was Einstein, and on the other all the rest. -Rudolf Ladenburg
The obvious precedent for Beijing 2008 was the Berlin Olympics, in 1936. Both were showcases for a muscle-flexing nation, although Hitler made an elementary error when he chose not to dress his young National Socialists in lime-green catsuits laced with twinkling fairy lights. -Anthony Lane
Fortunately I experienced Max Wertheimer’s teaching in Berlin and collaborated for over a decade with Wolfgang Köhler. I need not emphasize my debts to these outstanding personalities. The fundamental ideas of Gestalt theory are the foundation of all our investigations in the field of the will, of affection, and of the personality. -Kurt Lewin
It would be wrong to say that the city of Berlin is not regulated. What I think is more interesting is to what extent a city creates a sort of safe haven for its users, so that people feel confident that the city works on their behalf. -Olafur Eliasson
When we refused to be forced out of Berlin, we demonstrated to the people of Europe that with their cooperation we would act, and act resolutely, when their freedom was threatened. -Harry S. Truman
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
This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family- not as his equal, of course, but as another being that was his concern. -Jonathan Safran Foer
I myself have already spent a third of my life in Germany, first in Cologne and then, since 1994, in Berlin. -Olafur Eliasson
I wanted to invent some kind of American dance that was danced to the music that I grew up on: Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart and Irving Berlin. So I evolved a style that certainly didn’t catch on right away – but I had some good mentors in New York who encouraged me. -Gene Kelly
Major Strasser: You give him (Rick Blaine) credit for too much cleverness. My impression was that he’s just another blundering American. Captain Renault: We musn’t underestimate American blundering. I was with them when they blundered into Berlin in 1918. -Humphrey Bogart
In Berlin, things are serious but not hopeless. In Vienna, they are hopeless but not serious. -Karl Kraus
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
My work in those years was essentially of a propagandist nature. I was too young and unknown to play a part in the leading circles of Germany, let alone of world Zionism, which was controlled from Berlin. -Nahum Goldmann
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
If Berlin fell, the US would lose Europe, and if Europe fell into the hands of the Soviet Union and thus added its great industrial plant to the USSR’s already great industrial plant, the United States would be reduced to the character of a garrison state if it were to survive at all. -Dwight D. Eisenhower
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
As a five-year-old in Berlin in 1965, I didn’t know that funny women existed. It wasn’t until I got back to England that I realised women could be funny. -Jenny Eclair
Call Berlin. Drop everything we’re doing. I have a complete vision of what should be. -Daniel Libeskind
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
I want to say at once that I frankly believe that Irving Berlin is the greatest songwriter that has ever lived…. His songs are exquisite cameos of perfection, and each one of them is as beautiful as its neighbor. Irving Berlin remains, I think, America’s Schubert. -George Gershwin
The birds sang, the proles sang. the Party did not sing. All round the world, in London and New York, in Africa and Brazil, and in the mysterious, forbidden lands beyond the frontiers, in the streets of Paris and Berlin, in the villages of the endless Russian plain, in the bazaars of China and Japan — everywhere stood the same solid unconquerable figure, made monstrous by work and childbearing, toiling from birth to death and still singing. -George Orwell
My time in Weimar Berlin was the most elegant in my life. I would have parties for a hundred people – writers, scientists, artists. -Eva Zeisel
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
War is a farmer’s son from Kansas trying to kill a factory worker’s son from Berlin, with neither of them knowing why. -Randall Wallace
Private travel into foreign countries can be requested without conditions […]. Permission will be granted instantly. Permanent relocations can be done through all border checkpoints between the GDR into the FRG or Berlin (West). -Gunter Schabowski
Musically, I didn’t relate to Berlin. There seemed to be a lot of machine music made there – I don’t think I saw a stringed instrument in two years. -Feist
Irresponsibility, cowardice, personal vanity, whining and chaos are becoming the maxims of political action. There is a stink in Berlin – a huge one! -Edmund Stoiber
As far as songwriters, I’ve always been a fan of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin; those guys mean a lot to me. -Mel Brooks
Fast food is the one thing everyone can relate to. It’s depressing, but also interesting, that people desire to eat the same sandwich in every single city in the world. But the biggest bummer is when you see a Subway in Berlin. Just devastating. -Patrick Carney
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
I love deep cleavage on the foot. It reminds me of Berlin in 1930s, ‘Cabaret.’ -Christian Louboutin
To represent your country at a home Olympics is something special and I’m over the moon to be selected for Team GB. I was pleased to get the qualifying time in Berlin earlier this year and my sole focus is getting in the right shape for London. -Paula Radcliffe
Well, right now, I’m very fascinated with 1920s Berlin. I mean, probably the more interesting thing would be to go to the beginning of civilization or precivilization – like polytheistic times. It would be interesting to see what came before modern religion and culture – what circumstances created the environment or the need for it. -Natalie Portman
Hey,” said Jace. who was sitting on an overturned speaker, looking at his cellphone, “do you want to see a photo of Alec and Magnus in Berlin?” “Not really,” said Simon. “Magnus is wearing lederhosen.” “And yet, still no. -Cassandra Clare
Nobody had forgotten anything here. In Berlin, you had to wrestle with the past, you had to build on the ruins, inside them. It wasn’t like America where we scraped the earth clean, thinking we could start again every time. -Janet Fitch
…what happened in New York and Washington is the same thing that England and America did to Berlin every day for three years during World War II – and Germany did the same thing to England. -Lemmy Kilmister
By 2040, the Sahara will be moving into Europe and Berlin will be as hot as Baghdad. Atlanta will end up a kudzu jungle. Phoenix will become uninhabitable, as will parts of Beijing (desert), Miami (rising seas) and London (floods). Food shortages will drive millions of people north, raising political tensions. -James Lovelock
People complain that our generation has no philosophers. They are wrong. They now sit in another faculty. Their names are Max Planck and Albert Einstein. Upon appointment as the first president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, Berlin, formed for the advancement of science. -Adolf von Harnack
Clouds of a different sort signal an environmental holocaust without precedent. Once again, world leaders waffle, hoping the danger will dissipate. Yet today the evidence is as clear as the sounds of glass shattering in Berlin. -Al Gore
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
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
The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it. -Walid Jumblatt
I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government an official note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock, that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and consequently this country is at war with Germany. -Neville Chamberlain
Brent Berlin and Paul Kay in Basic Color Terms demonstrate exhaustively and empirically, the very simple thesis that anywhere in the world, as a language develops and acquires names for color, the colors always enter in the same order. The most primitive are black and white. Then red. Then either green or yellow. -Alexander Theroux
I absolutely am a big Call of Duty fan. Every time a new Call of Duty comes out – I never play the games online, but I play the solo version super fast. My family knows not to interrupt me the day they come out, they know it’s a sacred date for me. I think my favorite visually, of all of the Call of Duty games – even if it’s not as sassy and high tech – is World at War because. That game has some really incredible episodes in Berlin and the Japanese fields. It’s really quite arresting for me, visually, and it was very immersive. But I love Modern Warfare, too. -Guillermo del Toro
Taking on all at once Germany, Japan, and Italy – diverse enemies all – did not require the weeding out of all the fascists and their supporters in Mexico, Argentina, Eastern Europe, and the Arab world. Instead, those in jackboots and armbands worldwide quietly stowed all their emblems away as organized fascism died on the vine once the roots were torn out in Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo. So too will the terrorists, once their sanctuaries and capital shrivel up – as is happening as we speak. -Victor Davis Hanson
Everyone who does not live in Berlin lives in Brooklyn now. -Don DeLillo
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
Okay, NATO expanded to East Berlin and East Germany. Under [Bill] Clinton NATO expanded further, to the former Russian satellites. In 2008 NATO formally made an offer to Ukraine to join NATO. That’s unbelievable. I mean, Ukraine is the geopolitical heartland of Russian concern, quite aside from historical connections, population and so on. -Noam Chomsky
Most people who live at the border or are familiar with the border know that a Berlin-like wall stretching from San Diego to Brownsville is not necessary. And the costs would be prohibitive. And there are places on the border, such as the Arizona desert or the open terrain around the Big Bend in South Texas, where Mother Nature has created her own barrier that is not easily passable. Or if you do pass through it, you are easily detected. -Alan Bersin
Writing every day across nine time zones because Gillian [Grassie] was in Berlin, and we were working together via Skype. It was pretty intense. I’m really happy with how it turned out. -Zach Anner
If you’ve been to the city of Malmo in Sweden, or to Berlin or to Hamburg or to London or to Paris in the suburbs, or Rotterdam in my own country. You see many cities where there is a city within a city – where even today in the United Kingdom – I don’t know if you’re aware of that – there are even sharia courts active, whether it’s rulings that the worth of a woman is half of that of a man. -Geert Wilders
I am definitely pro-European, even pro-global, and house music and electronic music has developed a network all over the world, between record shops in Berlin, Tokyo, London, Chicago, Minneapolis and L.A. That’s really what I feel part of, rather than being French. -Thomas Bangalter
Berlin is still going through a transition since the Cold War – both in what used to be East and West Berlin. I can still sense the confusion and the struggle for identity there in the streets. There’s a pulse to it. -Diane Kruger
I think the Olympic Games have been married to political statements. If I go back to Berlin in 1936, it was very politically orientated then, just with the Nazis. -John Carlos
In the 19th century, Berlin was called the German Chicago. Or Chicago was called the American Berlin because they were sort of new cities or new powerhouses. -Darryl Pinckney
The only time this happened to me before was in Jil Sander in Berlin where they said, “We have nothing that will fit you.” I said, “Yes, you do.” And I found something great. This happens to me in Paris again and again and again. They don’t carry anything over size 40 which is nothing, because I wear a size 42 or 44 but that’s hard to find in Paris among the designer clothes. All stores are like that. -Nan Goldin
I’ve translated two of Bae’s novels, A Greater Music and Recitation, which are coming from Open Letter and Deep Vellum in October and January respectively. A Greater Music is a semi-autobiographical book centred on a Korean writer moving to Berlin, learning to live and even write in a foreign language. -Deborah Smith
Berlin is the place to which I am most closely bound by human and scientific ties. -Albert Einstein
Few tears will be shed over the demise of the East German army, but what about East Germany’s eighty symphony orchestras, bound to lose some subsidies? Or the whole East German system, which covered everyone in a security blanket from day care to health care, from housing to education? Some people are beginning to express, if ever so slightly, nostalgia for that Berlin Wall. -Bob Simon
The adidas +Challenge is a really cool opportunity for kids here in Los Angeles and across the country to get excited for the FIFA World Cup this summer. As a big fan of soccer, Im looking forward to seeing the 32 youth teams compete for the title of Team USA and represent our country at the global finals in Berlin. -Luke Wilson
I love the sound of snow… You can hear it even if you are only standing on a balcony. [The sound] is only minimal, not even a real noise: a breath, a trifle of a sound. You have the same thing in music: if in the score there is a pianissimo marked that ends in nothing. Up thee you can feel this ‘nothing’. With an orchestra it is very difficult to achieve it. The Berlin Philharmonic manage it sometimes. -Claudio Abbado
Just the way in Europe, Paris, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, and Frankfurt, possibly and Berlin, certainly, all had important roles, because of independence. Because they were depending on themselves. -Jane Jacobs
“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
My works are dear to me, each in its own way, I shall have to answer for them on the Day off Judgement. God alone knows whether I shall ever see them again. Quite apart from the money which I was going to receive for their sale there (exhibition in Gallery Der Sturm, Berlin June-July, 1914) and it is no small sum. -Marc Chagall
Remember, the early ’60s in London was something – which must have been like Berlin in the ’30s when the arts flourished. You didn’t have the differences in class, and so on. -Ken Adam
People know Detroit for the cars, but the suburban areas of the city are really beautiful. It’s much more inhabitable than people think. Many believe it’s like Berlin at the end of World War II. -Leonard Slatkin
I know very well that Berlin attaches great importance to NATO and solidarity, in terms of sharing the burden. For this reason, I feel confident that the German government will take the right decision, one that serves both German and NATO interests. -Anders Fogh Rasmussen
Not only should we laugh about Hitler. We must laugh about him. Especially in Berlin. -Mel Brooks
By seizing the formerly little-known Height 102.0 – the Mamayev Hill – the Red Army fought its way to the fascists’ den – Berlin. We are proud to say that our victory in Stalingrad radically changed the whole situation in the Second World War. And this victory meant that our Motherland had withstood one of the most difficult tests in its history. -Aleksandr Vasilevsky
I couldn’t really take a girl from Berlin to live in Leeds. I love it here. I miss the Yorkshire sense of humor and things like bitter and Yorkshire puddings, but I can still get my hands on salt ‘n’ vinegar crisps. -Sam Riley
Berlin is like being abroad in Germany. It’s German, but not provincial. -Claudia Schiffer
In the past Berlin was much more radical and extreme and now it’s becoming much more of a conventional European city. -Olafur Eliasson
I like museums in Berlin a lot, especially in the eastern part. They’re extraordinarily good. -Elliott Erwitt
It’s financially advantageous to make a picture in Berlin, Germany. They have a very effective rebate system. -Joel Silver
Indeed, there is a moment on the first CD – the electrifying opening to “I Got Loaded,” which sounds like an R&B standard but isn’t – when you might find yourself asking whether anyone who has ever been smitten by pop music can fail to have his heart stopped by the chords, the swing, and, once again, Steve Berlin’s wonderfully greasy sax. -Nick Hornby
I don’t know anyone who sits down to write a song hit except Irving Berlin. He can’t help writing hits. -Cole Porter
In Berlin Jews controlled almost one hundred percent of the theaters and cinemas before the rise to power. -Hermann Goring
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
There is no business like show business, Irving Berlin once proclaimed, and thirty years ago he may have been right, but not anymore. Nowadays almost every business is like show business, including politics, which has become more like show business than show business is. -Russell Baker
It is advertising that enthrones the customer as king. This infuriates the socialist…[it is] the crossing of the boundary between West Berlin and East Berlin. It is Checkpoint Charlie, or rather Checkpoint Douglas, the transition from the world of choice and freedom to the world of drab, standard uniformity. -Enoch Powell
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
Museums collect what’s important in their respective countries. In Berlin’s National Gallery, however, this isn’t the case. They’re interested neither in me nor the other usual suspects. It’s simply a German reality. -Georg Baselitz
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
I think it’s absolutely fascinating that in Berlin the parliament can discuss actively the role of their soldiers in Afghanistan because is it still possible, literally, for a German soldier to take up arms. -Stephen Daldry
The Berlin of the ’20s formed the foundation of my future education… the Berlin of the UFA studios, of Fritz Lang, Lubitsch and Erich Pommer. The Berlin of the architects Gropius, Mendelsohn and Mies van der Rohe. The Berlin of the painters Max Libermann, Grosz, Otto Dix, Klee and Kandinsky. -Ken Adam
Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American music. Emotionally, he honestly absorbs the vibrations emanating from the people, manners and life of his time and, in turn, gives these impressions back to the world – simplified, clarified and glorified. -Jerome Kern
My dad was a journalist. He was in Rwanda right after the genocide. In Berlin when the wall came down. He was always disappearing and coming back with amazing stories. So telling stories for a living made sense to me. -Patrick J. Adams
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
Berlin is a skeleton which aches in the cold: it is my own skeleton aching. I feel in my bones the sharp ache of the frost in the girders of the overhead railway, in the iron-work of balconies, in bridges, tramlines, lamp-standards, latrines. The iron throbs and shrinks, the stone and the bricks ache dully, the plaster is numb. -Christopher Isherwood
I am in Paris. Yes ma’am , I made it back. I came up from Berlin, stopped here ten days, fought a losing battle against my deepest inclinations, pulled myself out by the hair and went to Madrid…Madrid is a lovely enchanting city, and there was almost ready for me a kind of penthouse full of sunlight, a roof garden, and so on. I gave one look at it all, returned to the hotel and went to bed and wept bitterly for eleven hours…Why? Because I had seen Paris and could not endure the thought of being anywhere else. -Katherine Anne Porter
I went to Berlin for a year and a half, and that’s where I learned about culture and art and everything. Before that, I lived in total absence of culture. I come from a house where there was nothing like reading or art. -Lea Seydoux
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
The romanticism and sentimentality in the relationship between Paris and Berlin is likely to vanish. It’s the way it is with an old, married couple, although the established habits will remain in place. -Max Gallo
Our prison in Georgia is a very different place from this prison here in Berlin. The conditions there are inhuman. -Irakli Okruashvili
I studied fascism when I was at university. My husband’s family are German Jews. I’m very close to his grandma and she left Berlin when she was 19 in 1937. So, it’s kind of all around me. -Cate Shortland
There are probably many people in Israel who believe that Wagner, who died in 1883, lived in Berlin in 1942 and was friends with Hitler. -Daniel Barenboim
The Berlin Wall is the defining achievement of socialism. -George Will
I’ll be like Irving Berlin: “There’s no business like show business.” -Debbie Reynolds
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
After the German abstention at the UN, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle commented that Germany doesn’t always have to stand on the side of its traditional allies. Berlin can look for new partners all over the world. -Donald Rumsfeld
From the Berlin tenement reform law of 1897 to H. P. Berlage’s plan for Amsterdam South of 1917, designers and theorists in Germany and Holland moved toward the development of a perimeter residential block that would preserve the plastic continuity of the street while opening up the resultant courtyard for use as an enclosed semi-public space. -Kenneth Frampton
As for the role of France and Germany: French politics is often more self-confident then German politics due to the catastrophe in the first half of the last century. If Berlin and Paris don’t agree, then it is difficult to make progress in Europe. -Wolfgang Schauble
The best thing about Berlin was that I got to be surrounded by people who pursue their ideas for themselves. -Agnes Obel
Berlin seems like a place of healing to me though: you have both the Holocaust Memorial and Hiroshima Strasse side-by-side there. You have the whole last century libraried and you can see exactly what we did. Now there’s lots of artists and musicians moving there because they can’t afford the rent in London and New York, and they’re having children and making it a gentle place. It seems to be a place of hope now. -Robert Montgomery
It is a commentary on Berlin in 1931 that … it was ‘My Yiddishe Momme’ that the Berlin Broadcasting Company asked for. -Sophie Tucker
I view the United States, today, much like East Berlin. And I’m off the grid. I’ve tried for 20 years to warn the country about the Democrats and Republicans, and nobody’s listening. -Jesse Ventura
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
[Written in 1901:] Nothing has been so deplorable for countries as centralization. I am afraid when I see Germany grow so powerful, and centralizing in Berlin; it is the beginning of the end! -Elisabeth of Wied
Studies from universities in Holland and Berlin confirm that 80 percent of Muslims in the Netherlands believe it is a heroic deed to travel to Syria as a fighter. -Geert Wilders
[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
The point of Berlin was that it seemed that only people like you ran the city. You never ran into people who weren’t like you – especially when you lived as that kind of American in Berlin connected to the arts. -Darryl Pinckney
If you want a model for what is possible, if you want to see how to build a peaceful and prosperous and dynamic society, then look at Berlin and look at Germany. -Barack Obama
Sir, The Planet [Neptune] whose position you marked out actually exists. On the day on which your letter reached me, I found a star of the eighth magnitude, which was not recorded in the excellent map designed by Dr. Bremiker, containing the twenty-first hour of the collection published by the Royal Academy of Berlin. The observation of the succeeding day showed it to be the Planet of which we were in quest. -Johann Gottfried Galle
What I have to tell you is this: I am resolved that dancing is to be my path. I know that to be a dancer is to be considered in our world little more than a prostitute. But you cannot imagine what is happening here in Berlin. It is different back home, but in Europe dance is being reborn as something more than cheap entertainment by loose women. -Wendy Buonaventura
Berlin stimulates like arsenic. -Harold Nicolson
I remember I went to Berlin right after the Wall came down. I first went to East Berlin, and all the buildings were old and falling down, and now when you go back to Berlin, you know you’re in the East because all the buildings are brand new and very tall. -Moby
George Kennan is another extreme case. He was the American consul in Berlin until the war between Germany and the United States broke out in December 1941. And until then he was writing pretty supportive statements back stressing that we shouldn’t be so hard on the Nazis if they were doing something we didn’t agree with – basically repeating the idea that they were people we could do business with. -Noam Chomsky
Berlin’s great secret is that he says exactly what he means; sometimes he hits a gigantic line both musically and lyrically – almost Wagnerian in its strength. -Oscar Hammerstein II
Berlin is one of my favorite cities in the world. I feel like the energy is very youthful. It has such an important history, including its recent history of unification. -Mark Zuckerberg
Berlin is the testicles of the West, every time I want the West to scream, I squeeze on Berlin. -Nikita Khrushchev
The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. … It was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York. -Freeman Dyson
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
Architects thrive after massive urban disasters. The abject collapse of East Berlin gave us the only city in Europe with a mighty host of Postmodern skyscrapers. -Bruce Sterling
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
His mouth is a no-go area. It’s like kissing the Berlin Wall. -Helena Bonham Carter
In ’83 I started travelling round Europe with my slide show. It wasn’t until I moved to Europe and got accepted in a big way in Berlin in the ’90s that I got acceptance by the big art world in New York. I didn’t really get to be known, or in the market, til ’93 in New York. -Nan Goldin
In a way, it [my style] is an homage. But I didn’t really know about it at first. But then when I started living in Berlin in the early ’90s, I started getting ID and Dazed and Confused. I was shocked how close things were to my work. -Nan Goldin
A dining club which I was involved in at Oxford University invited Sir Isaiah Berlin to dinner, who I believe was probably the greatest liberal philosopher in the 20th century. I sat beside him and we spoke about liberal philosophy and the events of the 20th century all night over dinner – it was unforgettable! -George Brandis
I had just come off of doing a play in Los Angeles which actually got me the role. It was called Bent and it was at the Mark Taper Forum. I was playing a homosexual in 1930 to 1934 Berlin who is eventually put into a concentration camp for the second half of the play. I had lost about 38 pounds for that. -Patrick Heusinger
Some of it was shot in Berlin, but a lot of it was filmed in Hamburg, along the Reeperbahn in Hamburg in the famous red light district. Kino is obviously German and “film” and “cinema” and we were always cinematic in our thinking. -Stephen Mallinder
I’m quite sure it happened in Berlin too when Eva [Braun] stayed there later on. I wouldn’t know about that because I was scarcely ever there myself. I don’t want to suggest she was crying all the time, but then they had their arguments, she was very downcast until she had cried it through. It happened on occasion. -Gretl Braun
Still we did not expect to be without rubs and difficulties; and we have had them. First the detention of Western posts: then the coalition of Pilnitz, outlawing our commerce with France, and the British enforcement of the outlawry. In your day French depredations; in mine English, and the Berlin and Milan decrees: now the English orders of council, and the piracies they authorize. When these shall be over, it will the impressment of our seamen, or something else; and so we have gone on, and so we shall go on, puzzled and prospering beyond example in the history of man. -Thomas Jefferson
I wouldn’t want to live in Berlin. It’s bombed out and there’s a lot of techno. -Sloane Crosley
I don’t feel pressure. I don’t give a toss about it. I spent the afternoon of Sunday, July 9, 2006 in Berlin sleeping and playing the PlayStation. In the evening, I went out and won the World Cup. -Andrea Pirlo
One day in Berlin … Eno came running in and said, ‘I have heard the sound of the future.’ … he puts on ‘I Feel Love’, by Donna Summer … He said, ‘This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years.’ Which was more or less right. -David Bowie
Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible. The contrast between West and East Berlin is the latest demonstration, like a laboratory experiment for all to see. Yet those who are loudest in proclaiming their desire to eliminate poverty are loudest in denouncing capitalism. Man’s well-being is not their goal. -Ayn Rand
I wanted no part of politics. And I wasn’t in Berlin to compete against any one athlete. The purpose of the Olympics, anyway, was to do your best. As I’d learned long ago from Charles Riley, the only victory that counts is the one over yourself. -Jesse Owens