Quotes By Theodore Bikel

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.

I always sang, I always acted, I always played.

Audiences are audiences.

Every actor wants to direct.

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?

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.

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.

No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. By what conduit do we know what we know?

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.

For I firmly believe that Jewish life, indeed any communal life, can only be organized according to democratic principles.

I am filled with awe that filmmakers have the capacity to stir us and give us back a sense of wonder.

Despite a large body of work in films, TV, theatre and concerts, I am viewed by many as a Jewish artist. I do not resent the label, except for the fact that I disapprove of labels in general.

But, when I toil in the field of Jewish culture which I frequently do, I am indeed a Jewish artist.

I am a universalist, passionately devoted to the cause of equality within the human family.

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.

The play is always fresh to me. It's not the audience's fault that I've said the words before.

I am not a specialist but a general practitioner in the world of the arts.

I am not, and have never been, in favor of boycotting Israel.

No movement can afford to be caught in a time warp and exist in a state of suspended animation.

I remain convinced that I can be a true universalist only when I am a better Jew.

In my mind the city of Ariel is a thorn in Israel's side and a serious obstacle to peace.

We live in a world of guns, bombs and terror. To conquer hate seems a nigh-impossible task.

I tried for a while to be an agricultural worker and was hopelessly bored. I would stand around in heaps of manure and sing about the beauty of the work I wasn't doing.

By showing hunger, deprivation, starvation and brutality, as well as endurance and nobility, documentaries inform, prod our memories, even stir us to action. Such films do battle for our very soul.

I am determined to give the Yiddish language a fighting chance to survive.

I do not know who there is among us that can claim to know God's purpose and God's intent.

I have always striven to raise the voice of hope for a world where hate gives way to respect and oppression to liberation.

You don't really need modernity in order to exist totally and fully. You need a mixture of modernity and tradition.

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.