Top 474 Berlin Quotes & Sayings

There are certain reactions that you aren't allowed to show in Berlin, for example that you feel offended. If you do, the best-case scenario is a sympathetic article along the lines of: Nice guy, but he's not up to it. The alternative is to don a suit of armor and become cynical. But that's not healthy either: Cynicism is the worst characteristic a politician can have. That's why you have to have an internal balance in Berlin, so you can stay true to yourself. And I have that.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I know when the Berlin wall went down and I walked into what was East Berlin and saw two big Nike banners - that gave me a chill.

As we say in Berlin, there are many ways to bake a parrot.

I was a foreign correspondent in Berlin in the mid-'90s.

I heard opera all day long. From the time I was 9 years old, I was imitating the singers; later I studied opera. But we also got Western television and radio, from the Americans in West Berlin. When I was 11 years old, I turned into a hippie and gave flowers to policemen. And when I was 21 and left Berlin for London, I became a punk.

I live between Barcelona and Berlin. Staying in Spain over the winter and Berlin for spring and summer is an ideal combination.

Berlin stimulates like arsenic.

I wouldn't want to live in Berlin. It's bombed out and there's a lot of techno.

I met Jared Leto at Soho House in Berlin.

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.

Berlin is liberation. Architecture, man!

The Berlin Wall is the defining achievement of socialism.

Two years ago I was on the train from Berlin to Frankfurt when I heard that the Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to my close friend, the writer Liu Xiaobo, who is imprisoned in China. To me it was confirmation that universal values and a moral code do exist, and that the point of the Nobel Prize is to encourage writers to stand up for this moral code. Last Thursday I was once again on the train from Berlin to Frankfurt when I heard that the Nobel Prize for Literature had gone to Mo Yan. He is a state poet. I am utterly bewildered. Do these universal values not exist after all?

When I was 16, I went to Berlin - West Berlin, since at that time a wall still divided the city - to live for three months with a family on an exchange program.

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.

I like museums in Berlin a lot, especially in the eastern part. They're extraordinarily good.

I remember Berlin. Berlin to me was the star of the film. I loved for six months that we filmed there.

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.

It is a commentary on Berlin in 1931 that ... it was 'My Yiddishe Momme' that the Berlin Broadcasting Company asked for.

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.

Berlin is still 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. It's a very young city. It's a vibrant city. It's an exciting city. It's a city that's also scarred by history. I think that's to be celebrated and graffiti is to be celebrated. Graffiti in Berlin is very different than when they spray something on the wall dividing the west bank and Israel. And should be treated as such in Berlin.

I traveled to Berlin promoting something a few years back, and Berlin is absolutely my favorite city I've ever been to. I want desperately to film something there.

Every Westerner is jubilating that the Berlin Wall has fallen. Something worst than the Berlin Wall is in Palestine; and nobody is talking about it.

The hardest thing about Berlin is letting it belong to other people.

Berlin is the testicles of the West, every time I want the West to scream, I squeeze on Berlin.

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.

A final in Berlin is always something special.

If the purpose of the wall was to destroy Berlin, Herr Ulbricht and his cohorts have erred sadly. Berlin is not only going to continue to exist - it's going to grow and grow and grow. Its ties to West Germany will not be severed.

There's a great tradition among the English of writing about Berlin. It's kind of a state of mind, almost. That even translates in terms of music. A lot of people go to Berlin with the idea that it's a state of mind.

Everyone who does not live in Berlin lives in Brooklyn now.

I was born in Berlin, and when I was 6, my mom passed. When I was 9, I moved to near Washington, D.C., where I lived with my aunt and uncle. And then at 11, I moved back to Berlin. And then at 16, I got in trouble in school and moved back to the Washington area.

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.

I grew up in East Berlin, in a family of artists.

I love Berlin.

In 'The Serpent's Egg,' I created a Berlin which no one recognized, not even I.

His mouth is a no-go area. It's like kissing the Berlin Wall.

Berlin is like being abroad in Germany. It's German, but not provincial.

I think that, certainly, most of my operatic roles are in German. I think it happened because, of course, I was lucky in that I was invited to sing, first of all, my operatic debut in Berlin at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, which was West Berlin at the time.

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.

I jumped at the chance and auditioned for a leading role in the musical 'Hair,' which was touring in Berlin and London. I won roles in both productions and left my job as a secretary after 18 months in 1970 to join the cast of 'Hair' in Berlin. I opted for Berlin because a girl from my neighborhood was also going to perform in 'Hair' there.

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.

There are several really interesting clocks in Berlin.

And of course I like Berlin a lot. It's such an interesting city

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.

Berlin is all about volatility. Its identity is based not on stability but on change.

Berlin is my favourite city.

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.

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.

I will do everything I can to renew a new Rome-Berlin axis.

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.

I think Berlin is always inspiring. I love being in Berlin. It feels like such a cool city, with so much culture and art and independence everywhere.

My grandfather had been a well-known judge in Berlin.

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.

And of course I like Berlin a lot. It's such an interesting city.