Dieter F. Uchtdorf Quotes

When I turned 11, we had to leave East Germany overnight because of the political orientation of my father. Now I was going to school in West Germany, which was American-occupied at that time. There in school, all children were required to learn English and not Russian. To learn Russian had been difficult, but English was impossible for me.

So I left with Jean Claude and went to Paris, so when the Russians came to Prague, I was in Paris.

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.

I never felt the GDR was my home country.

I was born in East Germany, before the wall came down. We sort of escaped, I guess. I grew up all over the place. Germany, London, back and forth between Minnesota and Germany. I was sort of an army brat, but not in the army.

My father and grandfather were businessmen. The family business was Adelphi Paints in New Jersey. When the first energy crisis came in the early 1970s, the business suffered.

It was very interesting, and we went to Germany and we toured Germany like we were a German band in 1985.

I have a whole box full of pieces of the Berlin Wall and a heart made from the barbed wire of the Iron Curtain. It's - they're cherished treasures to me now, of course.

Mom was 50 when my Dad died. She got on a bus every weekday for years, and rode 40 miles each morning to Madison. She earned a new degree and learned new skills to start her small business. It wasn't just a new livelihood. It was a new life.

You know, North Korea situation is far worse than East Germany, and South Korea is weaker than West Germany.

One of the most difficult times in my life was when I escaped from Romania in November of 1989.

I was in Germany when the wall came down.

I grew up in East Germany, so we had to learn Russian in school... everybody hated it. I never thought it would come in handy... And being an actor, I've been able to use it quite a bit.

People in Tel Aviv can not imagine, but in 1990, here in Leipzig or Dresden, whoever wanted to buy a car had to wait 14 years. The East Germans worked like people in the West, but the fruits of their labor were harvested by a criminal regime.

Very early, it became clear to me that East Germany could not function.

Berlin has a uniquely haunting nature, symbolic of a problematic system that was created to oppress and divide a nation.

I always used the free room that the G.D.R. allowed me... There was no shadow over my childhood.

I was an immigrant. I came here at 12. We were caught behind the Iron Curtain until I was 10.

Certainly my parents were very political, so the whole Berlin Wall thing - and being a kid of the '80s - that's just something that's in your experience.

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.

If Adenauer were here with us in the sauna, we could see for ourselves that Germany is and will remain divided but also that Germany never will rise again.

We came from a family where we ran our own small business. Our dad made his own products. We made our own sausages, our own meatloafs, our own pickles. Dad had to do everything himself. He had to figure out how to finance his business.

I've been an employee all my life. Would I wish, if I could rewind it, to have gone down a different route? Possibly, but I've had a great time. Anyway I'm not ruling it out; I could still buy a business.

I never really thought I'd have the opportunity to run this business. It's an industry I grew up in. I watched EDS being formed in our living room at night.

Family farms and small businesses are the backbone of our communities.