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

Theodore Bikel

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Theodore Bikel
Age: 91 †
Born: 1924
Born: May 2
Died: 2015
Died: July 21
Actor
Businessperson
Film Actor
Musician
Politician
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Trade Unionist
Vienna
Austria
Theodore Meir Bikel
Organized
According
Indeed
Democratic
Principles
Believe
Communal
Life
Firmly
Jewish

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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.
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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.
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I always sang, I always acted, I always played.
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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.
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I am a universalist, passionately devoted to the cause of equality within the human family.
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'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?
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As an artist I have an even more abiding interest in the compact between the Arts and Government.
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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.
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I am filled with awe that filmmakers have the capacity to stir us and give us back a sense of wonder.
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The play is always fresh to me. It's not the audience's fault that I've said the words before.
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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.
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Throughout my life I have cared as deeply about the songs of all peoples as I have about the rights of all peoples.
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Retiring' - within that word is 'tiring,' and I'm not tired. I don't believe in retirement, really.
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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.
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You learn more from the flops than from the hits.
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You can't expect the entire world to come to New York to see you. You have to travel to them.
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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.
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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.
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I am determined to give the Yiddish language a fighting chance to survive.
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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.
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