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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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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
Always
Fault
Fresh
Faults
Air
Audience
Words
Play

More quotes by 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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I remain convinced that I can be a true universalist only when I am a better Jew.
Theodore Bikel
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No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.
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 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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Epistemology is the study of knowledge. By what conduit do we know what we know?
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 am a universalist, passionately devoted to the cause of equality within the human family.
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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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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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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Audiences are audiences.
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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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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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.
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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I prefer to choose which traditions to keep and which to let go.
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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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