Theodore Bikel Quotes

I am determined to give the Yiddish language a fighting chance to survive.

I prefer to choose which traditions to keep and which to let go.

I do prefer the stage. It's really the granddaddy of them all.

When something is moving you get that intake of breath and that stillness from the audience.

We live in a world of guns, bombs and terror. To conquer hate seems a nigh-impossible task.

'Visiting Mr. Green' is a good play. I enjoy being in it, and I have a wonderful colleague, Aidan deSalaiz, to work with. Audiences like it a lot. What's not to like?

While we all could agree that the Zionist ideal is alive and well, there is serious doubt whether the Zionist movement can be said to be an ongoing proposition, fragmented as its components are in ideology and in practice.

I glory in the fact that a human being has multiple talents and exercises them all with a degree of integrity and artistic proficiency. That's what I do.

No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.

By showing hunger, deprivation, starvation and brutality, as well as endurance and nobility, documentaries inform, prod our memories, even stir us to action. Such films do battle for our very soul.

But there is a difference here: When Jewish children are murdered, Arabs celebrate the deed. The death of an Arab child is no cause for celebration in Israel.

You can't expect the entire world to come to New York to see you. You have to travel to them.

Audiences are audiences.

All too often arrogance accompanies strength, and we must never assume that justice is on the side of the strong. The use of power must always be accompanied by moral choice.

An actor is supposed to emulate life. Instead, alas, many are imitating other actors. You don't fashion your knowledge of theatre or your approach to a role on the basis of what other actors have done. This kind of thinking is a great danger, especially in dealing with TV producers who frequently say things like, 'This is a Sean Connery type.'

You always draw on your experiences with live audiences to know how to do comedy on films. You're working for a laugh that may or may not come six months later, but you're working in a vacuum at the time you are doing it.

I tried for a while to be an agricultural worker and was hopelessly bored. To me it was meaningless. I would stand around in heaps of manure and sings about the beauty of the work I wasn't doing.

We Jews have a special attachment to the Book. The study of page after page in tomes yellowing with age was obligatory.

But, when I toil in the field of Jewish culture which I frequently do, I am indeed a Jewish artist.

Every actor wants to direct and produce, but I made a conscious decision when I was in college to understand the 'business' of 'show business.'

I prefer to make common cause with those whose weapons are guitars, banjos, fiddles and words.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. By what conduit do we know what we know?

I am a Zionist, an ardent supporter of Israel, its defender when I deem Israel to be right and its critic when I deem it to be wrong.

I created the role of Captain Von Trapp.

No movement can afford to be caught in a time warp and exist in a state of suspended animation.

I refuse to do shows that are narrowly constructed, that appeal to only one sentiment. I do a lot of Jewish material in front of non-Jews and a lot of non-Jewish material in front of Jews on the simple theory that the non-Jews are entitled to a glimpse of a Jewish world and the Jews are entitled to a glimpse of the world.

On the stage you're there, it's live. There's a beginning, a middle, an end. When something is funny you hear it right away.

I am a universalist, passionately devoted to the cause of equality within the human family.

One might have thought the world would stop ascribing moral equivalence between acts of terrorism and acts of punishing terrorism. It has not happened that way.

No doubt unity is something to be desired, to be striven for, but it cannot be willed into being by mere declarations.

I'm exceedingly proud of being an actor, but I never recommend it to anyone.

Must we be put to shame by much smaller and poorer countries, by Ireland, France, Austria or Sweden, who have understood that a nation's support of its arts is a matter of both national pride and cultural survival?

I am filled with awe that filmmakers have the capacity to stir us and give us back a sense of wonder.

If I have one vanity wish, it would be to direct. It's the only thing I haven't done yet that I would like to.

Although I am deeply grateful to a great many people, I forgo the temptation of naming them for fear that I might slight any by omission.

For I firmly believe that Jewish life, indeed any communal life, can only be organized according to democratic principles.

The play is always fresh to me. It's not the audience's fault that I've said the words before.

You don't really need modernity in order to exist totally and fully. You need a mixture of modernity and tradition.

I always sang, I always acted, I always played.

Retiring' - within that word is 'tiring,' and I'm not tired. I don't believe in retirement, really.

Throughout my life I have cared as deeply about the songs of all peoples as I have about the rights of all peoples.

Having come to live in this age is as though one were to have entered another country. Learn its language or risk being left out.

What moves me is neither ethnocentric pride nor sectarian arrogance. I make no claim that Jewish culture is superior to other cultures. But it is mine.

John Huston was the kind of director that totally left you alone. Not every actor always does it right, every time, but most of the time he was re-directing someone. He was making tight adjustments, and not even in terms of interpretation because he knew that by the time that the character had been filmed... well, he got it right when he cast you.

I don't speak out because I am an actor nor will I keep silent because I am an actor. I respect my profession, but it endows me with no special privileges; but it also does not limit me or muzzle me. I am a person and a citizen with the attendant responsibilities of voice and vote.

After the advent of the written word, the masses who could not - or were not permitted to - read, were given sermons by the few who could.

I am first, and foremost, an actor. That's what I am. To me, a song is a mini-drama. My musical ability informs the actor as well because it gives me a sense of timing that non-musicians don't have. So, one hand washes the other.

In my world, history comes down to language and art. No one cares much about what battles were fought, who won them and who lost them - unless there is a painting, a play, a song or a poem that speaks of the event.