No doubt unity is something to be desired, to be striven for, but it cannot be willed into being by mere declarations.
Theodore Bikel
You don't really need modernity in order to exist totally and fully. You need a mixture of modernity and tradition.
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.
Epistemology is the study of knowledge. By what conduit do we know what we know?
I do not know who there is among us that can claim to know God's purpose and God's intent.
I am first, and foremost, an actor. That's what I am. To me, a song is a mini-drama. My musical ability informs the actor as well because it gives me a sense of timing that non-musicians don't have. So, one hand washes the other.
No doubt, unity is something to be desired, to be striven for, but it cannot be willed by mere declarations.
I am not, and have never been, in favor of boycotting Israel.
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.
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.
When something is moving you get that intake of breath and that stillness from the audience.
I am determined to give the Yiddish language a fighting chance to survive.
As an artist I have an even more abiding interest in the compact between the Arts and Government.
I have always striven to raise the voice of hope for a world where hate gives way to respect and oppression to liberation.
For I firmly believe that Jewish life, indeed any communal life, can only be organized according to democratic principles.
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.
I prefer to make common cause with those whose weapons are guitars, banjos, fiddles and words.
I prefer to choose which traditions to keep and which to let go.
No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.
I am a universalist, passionately devoted to the cause of equality within the human family.
I created the role of Captain Von Trapp.
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.
We Jews have a special attachment to the Book. The study of page after page in tomes yellowing with age was obligatory.
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.
I remain convinced that I can be a true universalist only when I am a better Jew.
We live in a world of guns, bombs and terror. To conquer hate seems a nigh-impossible task.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Throughout my life I have cared as deeply about the songs of all peoples as I have about the rights of all peoples.
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.
I am not a specialist but a general practitioner in the world of the arts.
You learn more from the flops than from the hits.
I'm exceedingly proud of being an actor, but I never recommend it to anyone.
Audiences are audiences.
I always sang, I always acted, I always played.
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.
I do prefer the stage. It's really the granddaddy of them all.
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.
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.
The play is always fresh to me. It's not the audience's fault that I've said the words before.
Every actor wants to direct.
You can't expect the entire world to come to New York to see you. You have to travel to them.
But, when I toil in the field of Jewish culture which I frequently do, I am indeed a Jewish artist.
I am filled with awe that filmmakers have the capacity to stir us and give us back a sense of wonder.
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.
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?
No movement can afford to be caught in a time warp and exist in a state of suspended animation.
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.
