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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
Tradition
Choose
Keep
Traditions
Prefer

More quotes by 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.
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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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Epistemology is the study of knowledge. By what conduit do we know what we know?
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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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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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No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.
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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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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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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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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Retiring' - within that word is 'tiring,' and I'm not tired. I don't believe in retirement, really.
Theodore Bikel
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It's a sad thing to contemplate, but I'm the last surviving cast member of 'The African Queen.'
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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I always sang, I always acted, I always played.
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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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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Audiences are audiences.
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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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