Quotes By Theodore Bikel
We Jews have a special attachment to the Book. The study of page after page in tomes yellowing with age was obligatory.
Theodore Bikel
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
No movement can afford to be caught in a time warp and exist in a state of suspended animation.
Theodore Bikel
You can't expect the entire world to come to New York to see you. You have to travel to them.
Theodore Bikel
We live in a world of guns, bombs and terror. To conquer hate seems a nigh-impossible task.
Theodore Bikel
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
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.
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.
Theodore Bikel
I do not know who there is among us that can claim to know God's purpose and God's intent.
Theodore Bikel
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
You don't really need modernity in order to exist totally and fully. You need a mixture of modernity and tradition.
Theodore Bikel
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
I make no claim that Jewish culture is superior to other cultures or that the Jewish song is better than the song of my neighbor.
Theodore Bikel
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
No doubt, unity is something to be desired, to be striven for, but it cannot be willed by mere declarations.
Theodore Bikel
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
One might have thought the world would stop ascribing moral equivalence between acts of terrorism and acts of punishing terrorism. It has not happened that way.
Theodore Bikel