A Quote by Angela Merkel
During the course of 1989, more and more East Germans lost their fears of the state's repression and chicanery and went out on the streets. There was no turning back then. It is thanks to their courage the Wall was opened.
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The Berlin Wall fell because the East Germans saw the West had more. The Koreans don't like the Japanese and try to prove to them that they are worth more in the industrial arena.
The richer you are, the more worries you have - problems of security, future. Whatsoever you have, you have to hold it. You have to hold it against others because they are constantly watching for a right opportunity to take it back. Whatsoever you hold, you hold out of violence. And of course, if you have been violent then others can be violent to you. They are just waiting for the right moment. The richer you get, the more worries, more problems, more fears you have. Who bothers, if one is happy?
Thirty years ago, this promise, this allure of democracy, drove hundreds of thousands of people in East Germany onto the streets. What courage they showed! It was these brave people, these peaceful heroes and heroines, who brought the Wall tumbling down.
A friend of mine back in 1989 did an illegal rave in Vauxhall. He got Keith Haring to come along and tag the side of the wall. My friend cut it out of the wall and he kept it under his bed for 20 years. Then a few years ago he asks me if I want to buy it... so I spent £12,000 on a Keith Haring.
In the course of my life, for more than half a century, June 1989 was the major turning point. Up to that point, I was a member of the first class to enter university when college entrance examinations were reinstated following the Cultural Revolution (Class of '77).
It often requires more courage to suffer in silence than to rebel, more courage not to strike back than to retaliate, more courage to be silent than to speak.
I am not a courageous person by nature. I have simply discovered that, at certain key moments in this life, you must find courage in yourself, in order to move forward and live. It is like a muscle and it must be exercised, first a little, and then more and more. All the really exciting things possible during the course of a lifetime require a little more courage than we currently have. A deep breath and a leap.
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.
If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly; then I'd go out in the back streets and main streets and bring them in, all the sick, the halt, and the maimed; I would lead them gently, and they would smile me a weary thanks; and the band would softly bubble out the 'Hallelujah Chorus'.
It takes courage, of course, to step out of the fray, as it takes courage to do anything that's necessary, whether tending to a loved one on her deathbed or turning away from that sugarcoated doughnut.
They have done this through sexual repression, economic repression, political repression, social repression, ideological repression and spiritual repression.
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.
Our problems are both acute and chronic, yet all we hear from those in positions of leadership are the same tired proposals for more government tinkering, more meddling and more control---all of which led us to this state in the first place... We must have the clarity of vision to see the difference between what is essential and what is merely desirable, and then the courage to bring our government back under control and make it acceptable to the people.
Give thanks. Appreciate what you DO have ... the more we give thanks, the more we receive to be thankful for. Gratitude is the gift that always gives back.
The more fears that we're exposed to, the more fears that we are handling every single day, asks us to exert more and more control over our lives.
...despite all this, it is still hard to admit that there is no one more English than the Indian, no one more Indian than the English. There are still young white men who are angry about that; who will roll out at closing time into the poorly lit streets with a kitchen knife wrapped in a tight fist. But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears - dissolution, disappearance.
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