Theodore Bikel Quotes

As an artist I have an even more abiding interest in the compact between the Arts and Government.
Theodore Bikel

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.
Theodore Bikel

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.
Theodore Bikel

Despite a large body of work in films, TV, theatre and concerts, I am viewed by many as a Jewish artist. I do not resent the label, except for the fact that I disapprove of labels in general.
Theodore Bikel

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

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

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.
Theodore Bikel

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

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

I am filled with awe that filmmakers have the capacity to stir us and give us a sense of wonder. Film, like no other medium, makes a visceral appeal to our humanity.
Theodore Bikel

I do not know who there is among us that can claim to know God's purpose and God's intent.
Theodore Bikel

I have always striven to raise the voice of hope for a world where hate gives way to respect and oppression to liberation.
Theodore Bikel

I know for certain of only one commandment, one obligation, that God imposes upon us, and that is to be compassionate toward other human beings.
Theodore Bikel

I make no claim that Jewish culture is superior to other cultures or that the Jewish song is better than the song of my neighbor.
Theodore Bikel

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

I remain convinced that I can be a true universalist only when I am a better Jew.
Theodore Bikel

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.
Theodore Bikel

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.
Theodore Bikel

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.
Theodore Bikel

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?
Theodore Bikel

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

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

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.
Theodore Bikel

Right up to the middle of this century all perceptions of the world around us were delivered via the bookshelf or the paper route.
Theodore Bikel

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

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

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.
Theodore Bikel

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

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.
Theodore Bikel

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.
Theodore Bikel

You learn more from the flops than you do from the hits.
Theodore Bikel