One of our most noble political tasks is to open up trust.

I have left the federal government and the German Bundestag; I have resigned from all my positions in the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

The secret of big and revolutionary actions also consists in discovering the tiny step that is simultaneously a strategic step, insofar as it entails additional steps in the direction of a better reality.

War is not the quintessential emergency in which man has to prove himself, as my generation learned at its school desks in the days of the Kaiser; rather, peace is the emergency in which we all have to prove ourselves.

One of our most noble political tasks is to open up trust.

The time has come - and must come - for multilateral conversations about a secure peace in all of Europe.

Some fatherlands are difficult. Germany is one of them. But it is our fatherland. Here is where we live and work.