Quotes By Theodore Bikel

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.

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

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.

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.

Having come to live in this age is as though one were to have entered another country. Learn its language or risk being left out.

I prefer to make common cause with those whose weapons are guitars, banjos, fiddles and words.

I do prefer the stage. It's really the granddaddy of them all.

You learn more from the flops than from the hits.

No doubt, unity is something to be desired, to be striven for, but it cannot be willed by mere declarations.

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.

All too often arrogance accompanies strength, and we must never assume that justice is on the side of the strong. The use of power must always be accompanied by moral choice.

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.

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

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.

I'm exceedingly proud of being an actor, but I never recommend it to anyone.

I created the role of Captain Von Trapp.

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

As an artist I have an even more abiding interest in the compact between the Arts and Government.

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.

We Jews have a special attachment to the Book. The study of page after page in tomes yellowing with age was obligatory.