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Exlpore more Modernity quotes
"For millions of years, man spoke only to what he could see. Suddenly, in just one decade, 'seeing' and 'speaking' have been separated. We think we're used to it, yet we don't realize the immense impact it's had on our reflexes. Our bodies are simply not used to it. Frankly, the result is that, when we talk on the telephone, we enter a state that is similar to certain magical trances; we can discover other things about ourselves."
"Modernity is a qualitative, not a chronological, category."
"The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear - and even, in certain respects, would be - the most modern of critical movements."
"Everything is much easier in the half-blind and half-deaf world of modern giants that seduce processions of the blind into the world of great emptiness. In their sky the stars shine and their names live in the parallel and independently of their work."
"You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren't dying. They're merging into big conglomerates."
"Air travel reminds us who we are. It's the means by which we recognize ourselves as modern. The process removes us from the world and sets us apart from each other. We wander in the ambient noise, checking one more time for the flight coupon, the boarding pass, the visa. The process convinces us that at any moment we may have to submit to the force that is implied in all this, the unknown authority behind it, behind the categories, the languages we don't understand. This vast terminal has been erected to examine souls."
"It struck him that the true characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness."
"These clever, amoral, inventive, destructive men, single-minded, selfish, emotionally cool, coolly attractive. I think I preferred them to the love of Jesus. They were so necessary, and not only to me. Without them we would still be living in mud huts, waiting to invent the wheel."
Explore more quotes by Theodore Bikel
"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."
"No doubt unity is something to be desired, to be striven for, but it cannot be willed into being by mere declarations."
"The play is always fresh to me. It's not the audience's fault that I've said the words before."
"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."
"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."
"I prefer to make common cause with those whose weapons are guitars, banjos, fiddles and words."
"I am a universalist, passionately devoted to the cause of equality within the human family."
"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."
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