Mikis Theodorakis Quotes

Mikis Theodorakis

Profession : Composer

Birth : July 29, 1925

I love the Jewish people, I love the Jews!

Mikis Theodorakis

Greece is the only country in the Balkans that does not have territorial designs on its neighbors and wants to live in peace with them.

Mikis Theodorakis

I am a song of my times. I wasn't living in Vienna, like Mozart or Beethoven. In my circumstances, it was impossible to be indifferent.

Mikis Theodorakis

I'm not a communist or social democrat or anything else. I'm a free man.

Mikis Theodorakis

In Greece, the picket line is forbidden.

Mikis Theodorakis

Macedonia was, is and will forever be Greek.

Mikis Theodorakis

We cry. The Greeks cry because we have not an objective today. Yesterday we have objective to put off the dictatorship. Today the objective is to find ourselves.

Mikis Theodorakis

I write for all the peoples of all the world.

Mikis Theodorakis

I was thankful to him, this man who freed me. At the same time I was annoyed be cause the man who freed me doesn't have the right to speak for me. I had no intention to disavow my old principles. But to disavow Servan Schreiber made for problems.

Mikis Theodorakis

I want to leave this world as a Communist.

Mikis Theodorakis

The Greeks have needlessly been maneuvered towards the abyss.

Mikis Theodorakis

I put one questions. For whom I compose? My answer is I wanted to address to all my people. And if I write music for the Greek people because I'm Greek, I compose for all the people.

Mikis Theodorakis

I wanted to unite the popular and the serious, and to make a popular symphony, a popular oratorio.

Mikis Theodorakis

My work is based upon contemporary Greek poetry - poetry which is concerned with the problems of today's civilization and, of course, with simple personal feelings of love, nostalgia, etc.

Mikis Theodorakis

When I was still a child, there was the Metaxis, a Fascist Youth Movement in which all subteenagers and teenagers were obligatory members, where they tried to imbue us with two ideals - nationalism and Christianity.

Mikis Theodorakis

Those who had talked to us about national pride and Christian brotherly love were the first to come to terms or actively collaborate with the Germans. It was an immense blow to my entire intellectual and emotional existence.

Mikis Theodorakis

Whether art is music or cinema or whatever, it really is art only when it is in touch with the people - forced to respond to their agonies, their joys and their aspirations.

Mikis Theodorakis

I have been trying for years to perform in America. Now the first time I am here there is a strike. I must play. It is what I must do.

Mikis Theodorakis

I will continue to be critical of the system. Every honest patriot continues to fight against it.

Mikis Theodorakis

New York is a town of my height.

Mikis Theodorakis