Address at the Brandenburg Gate (Tear Down This Wall)
Delivered on June 12, 1987, in West Berlin near the Berlin Wall, challenging Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to dismantle the wall as a tangible proof of glasnost and perestroika.
Full Transcript
Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe.
Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world.
General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind.
Defining Key Excerpts
"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe... Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
"This wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth; the wall cannot withstand freedom."
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