Wer zu spät kommt, den bestraft das Leben. Life punishes whoever comes too late. Germans attribute the sentence to Mikhail Gorbachev, who visited East Berlin for the 40th anniversary of the GDR in October 1989. There is no recording of him saying it. On 6 October, the words a German news agency reporter heard were: Ich glaube, Gefahren lauern nur auf jene, die nicht auf das Leben reagieren. I believe dangers lie in wait only for those who do not react to life. On 7 October, his spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov told the press, in English, “Those who are late will be punished by life itself.” The agencies then put together the German sentence that the country remembers. Gorbachev later used the familiar version in his memoirs.