Daily Inspiration Quote by Otto Schily

Panic loves architecture. Otto Schily’s blunt dismissal of post-attack “adventurous schemes” for transit checkpoints lands because it punctures the familiar political ritual: a spectacular act of violence, followed by a frantic search for visible countermeasures that look like control. His key move is rhetorical deflation. “Adventurous” sounds almost approving until he pairs it with “nonsense,” reframing innovation as improvisation - and improvisation as risk theater.

The context matters: after the London bombings, mass transit became the symbol of modern vulnerability because it’s open by design. Subways and buses are not airports; they are arteries. Treating them like terminals would mean bottlenecks, delays, and a permanent suspicion of the everyday commuter. Schily is arguing that the cost is not only financial but civic: once you normalize checkpoints in the spaces that make a city fluid, you train the public to accept friction and surveillance as the price of ordinary life.

The subtext is a warning about the politics of reassurance. Security measures that can’t plausibly cover every station, every entrance, every rush-hour surge don’t primarily stop attacks; they broadcast action. His line about “100 percent security” isn’t a truism so much as a rebuke to officials tempted to promise the impossible. By drawing a hard limit, Schily tries to shift the debate from performative control to proportional risk management - and to force an uncomfortable admission: a free, functioning city includes some exposure, and pretending otherwise is how democracies talk themselves into overreaction.