If you live in a system that is suppressive, you don't walk upright, you always go with your head down.

A great number of people in the East German parts had been Nazis, so the change of mind was not altogether there.

And one of the worst effects was that by suppressing critical thought, it also suppressed critical thought in the field of economics and hampered the development of economics - and the country would fall back further and further in the economic competition with the West.

And also, of course, I knew that the German people, they're one, and would tend to consider themselves as one; and therefore they would consider the Wall as an enforced imprisonment. And I was right in thinking that way.

People who were not active in the intellectual life of the country could go on without feeling restricted, except they could not go where they wanted. They could not cross the border to the West whenever they liked.

Show me one place where a whole government is concerned with a book of a writer and is concerned enough to suppress it.

In the question of peace, people spoke up and demonstrated for peace and against the threat of war, the threat of atomic war.