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In my world, history comes down to language and art.

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
World
Language
History
Comes
Art

More quotes by Theodore Bikel

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Epistemology is the study of knowledge. By what conduit do we know what we know?
Theodore Bikel
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I prefer to choose which traditions to keep and which to let go.
Theodore Bikel
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We Jews have a special attachment to the Book. The study of page after page in tomes yellowing with age was obligatory.
Theodore Bikel
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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.
Theodore Bikel
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But, when I toil in the field of Jewish culture which I frequently do, I am indeed a Jewish artist.
Theodore Bikel
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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.
Theodore Bikel
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I do prefer the stage. It's really the granddaddy of them all.
Theodore Bikel
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You learn more from the flops than from the hits.
Theodore Bikel
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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.
Theodore Bikel
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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
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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.
Theodore Bikel
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I remain convinced that I can be a true universalist only when I am a better Jew.
Theodore Bikel
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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.
Theodore Bikel
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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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I am filled with awe that filmmakers have the capacity to stir us and give us back a sense of wonder.
Theodore Bikel
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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
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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.
Theodore Bikel
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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.
Theodore Bikel
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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.
Theodore Bikel
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I do not know who there is among us that can claim to know God's purpose and God's intent.
Theodore Bikel