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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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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
Universalist
Jew
Convinced
Remain
True
Better

More quotes by 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 determined to give the Yiddish language a fighting chance to survive.
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
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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.'
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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You don't really need modernity in order to exist totally and fully. You need a mixture of modernity and tradition.
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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The play is always fresh to me. It's not the audience's fault that I've said the words before.
Theodore Bikel
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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.
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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You can't expect the entire world to come to New York to see you. You have to travel to them.
Theodore Bikel
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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.
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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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
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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
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Audiences are audiences.
Theodore Bikel
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In my world, history comes down to language and art.
Theodore Bikel
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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.
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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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