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

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
Traditions
Prefer
Tradition
Choose
Keep

More quotes by Theodore Bikel

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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
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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 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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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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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 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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No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.
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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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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As an artist I have an even more abiding interest in the compact between the Arts and Government.
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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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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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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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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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.'
Theodore Bikel
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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.
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 always sang, I always acted, I always played.
Theodore Bikel