A Quote by Bob Simon

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

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About Army Beginning Berlin Berlin Wall Blanket Bound Care Covered Day Day Care Demise East East Germany Education Eighty Ever Everyone Express Few German Germany Health Health Care Housing Lose Nostalgia Over People Security Shed Slightly Some Some People Subsidies Symphony Symphony Orchestra Symphony Orchestras System Tears Wall Which Whole Will

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Bob Simon
American - Journalist
May 29, 1941 - February 11, 2015

When I was a kid, while touring East Berlin - back when there was an East Berlin - I got my left foot stuck in an escalator in Alexanderplatz. A few hours later, thanks to blowtorches and chainsaws and East German soldiers and the U.S. Embassy, my foot was released, and I along with it.

Kevin Bleyer

In comparison to the U.S. health care system, the German system is clearly better, because the German health care system works for everyone who needs care, ... costs little money, and it's not a system about which you have to worry all the time. I think that for us the risk is that the private system undermines the solidarity principle. If that is fixed and we concentrate a little bit on better competition and more research, I think the German health care system is a nice third way between a for-profit system on the one hand and, let's say, a single-payer system on the other hand.

Karl Lauterbach

[Mikhail] Gorbachev said that he would agree to the unification of Germany, and even adherence of Germany to NATO, which was quite a concession, if NATO didn't move to East Germany. And [George] Bush and [James] Baker promised verbally, that's critical, verbally that NATO would not expand "one inch to the east," which meant East Germany. Nobody was talking about anything farther at the time. They would not expand one inch to the east. Now that was a verbal promise. It was never written. NATO immediately expanded to East Germany.

Noam Chomsky

Germany's potential makes up about 20% of the EU's overall economic power, including Great Britain. The German army is by no means strong enough to guarantee the security of the EU's two endangered flanks - in the east and in the south. So all that remains for Germany is partnerships with its neighbours and other EU member states. Germany should stick to that role.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski

The German health care system is unique in its attempt to combine competition among sickness funds on the one hand and a universal coverage plan on the other hand. Most health care systems are either one or the other, so you either have private insurance and competition but not everyone is covered for everything, or you have a single-payer system. So the ideal types are like the American system on the one hand or the Scandinavian or U.K. systems on the other end. Germany tries to combine the advantages.

Karl Lauterbach

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

New York is the opposite of East Germany, the crown of individuality. That's why I can work well here and find out what I personally think of the pieces I'm learning. I can lay aside all the baggage of German education. In any case, whatever I do, I can't lose it altogether.

Jan Vogler

All German painters have a neurosis with Germany's past: war, the postwar period most of all, East Germany. I addressed all of this in a deep depression and under great pressure. My paintings are battles, if you will.

Georg Baselitz

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

In 1995, I went to Berlin to acting school, which was in East Berlin. And I decided to live in the east, because I thought if I go to West Berlin, I might as well stay in Stuttgart in the West because I know all the signs, and the way we deal with each other, and I wanted to get to know the other part of Germany and how they lived and what their history was and their biography. In that period of time, I learned a lot, and it helped me a lot.

Nina Hoss

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

We couldn't generalize on the people. Some of them were known to be tough guys and they didn't say much, but some of them were kind of soft-headed, but they did that. That was an East German film.

James Stockdale

Someone might say about a person, "Oh, they are a 'Westerner." But who are Westerners? Greek, Bulgarian, German, English, Scandinavian, Spanish, American, Latin. All different nations, all different people. Different individuals live in the West. There's no such thing as "West" just as there's no such things as "East." What is "East?" Turkey, Iran, China, India, Japan. They are all different. They are all unique.

Burhan Sonmez

In East Germany it was very normal for a woman to go out and work even if she had children. A few weeks after giving birth women would return to their normal working life. We never had housewives in East Germany.

Christian Schwochow

It is not in the interest of the German people or in the interest of world peace that Germany should become a pawn or a partner in a military struggle for power between the East and the West.

James F. Byrnes

The larger the German body, the smaller the German bathing suit and the louder the German voice issuing German demands and German orders to everybody who doesn't speak German. For this, and several other reasons, Germany is known as 'the land where Israelis learned their manners'.

P. J. O'Rourke

A Quote by Bob Simon

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