Gene Roddenberry Quotes

Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms.

The strength of a civilization is not measured by its ability to fight wars, but rather by its ability to prevent them.

If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life's exciting variety, not something to fear.

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.

In the 24th century there will be no hunger, there will be no greed, and all the children will know how to read.

I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We're still just a child creature, we're still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those phases. We're growing up, we're moving into adolescence now. When we grow up - man, we're going to be something!

It is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are. It does not matter that we will not reach our ultimate goal. The effort itself yields its own reward.

For Star Trek proves, as faulty as individual episodes could be, is that the much-maligned common man and common woman has an enormous hunger for brotherhood. They are ready for the twenty-third century now, and they are light-years ahead of their petty governments and their visionless leaders.

To be different is not necessarily to be ugly; to have a different idea is not necessarily to be wrong. The worst possible thing is for all of us to begin to look and talk and act and think alike.

I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will - and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.

It isn't all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning.

The network told me to get rid of Number One, the woman first lieutenant, and also get rid of 'that Martian fellow'... meaning, of course, Spock. I knew I couldn't keep both, so I gave the stoicism of the female officer to Spock, and married the actress who played Number One. Thank God it wasn't the other way around. I mean Leonard's cute, but...

If this is your God, he's not very impressive. He has so many psychological problems; he's so insecure. He demands worship every seven days. He goes out and creates faulty humans and then blames them for his own mistakes. He's a pretty poor excuse for a Supreme Being.

Star Trek says that it has not all happened, it has not all been discovered, that tomorrow can be as challenging and adventurous as any time man has ever lived.

Star Trek speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow — it's not all going to be over with a big flash and a bomb; that the human race is improving; that we have things to be proud of as humans. No, ancient astronauts did not build the pyramids — human beings built them, because they're clever and they work hard. And Star Trek is about those things.

...nuclear warfare is not necessary to cause a breakdown of our society. You take a large city like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago-their water supply comes from hundreds of miles away and any interruption of that, or food, or power for any period of time, you're going to have riots in the streets. Our society is so fragile, so dependent on the interworking of things to provide us with goods and services, that you don't need nuclear warfare to fragment us anymore than the Romans needed it to cause their eventual downfall.

Why are we now going into space? Well, why did we trouble to look past the next mountain? Our prime obligation to ourselves is to make the unknown known. We are on a journey to keep an appointment with whatever we are.

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

For me science fiction is a way of thinking, a way of logic that bypasses a lot of nonsense. It allows people to look directly at important subjects.

The human race is a remarkable creature, one with great potential, and I hope that 'Star Trek' has helped to show us what we can be if we believe in ourselves and our abilities.

We are on a journey to keep an appointment with whatever we are.

Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all.

The glory of creation is in its infinite diversity.

Art is really people asking the eternal question, "What is it all about?"

Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving.

A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away.

We have within reach, now, the attainment of almost every dream of mankind.

For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain. If people need religion, ignore them and maybe they will ignore you, and you can go on with your life. It wasn't until I was beginning to do Star Trek that the subject of religion arose. What brought it up was that people were saying that I would have a chaplain on board the Enterprise. I replied, "No, we don't.

They said God was on high and he controlled the world and therefore we must pray against Satan. Well, if God controls the world, he controls Satan. For me, religion was full of misstatements and reaches of logic that I just couldn't agree with.

We stress humanity, and this is done at considerable cost. We can't have a lot of dramatics that other shows get away with - promiscuity, greed, jealousy. None of those have a place in 'Star Trek.'

Ancient astronauts didn't build the pyramids. Human beings built the pyramids, because they're clever and they work hard.

'Star Trek' is a 'Wagon Train' concept - built around characters who travel to worlds 'similar' to our own, and meet the action-adventure-drama which become our stories. Their transportation is the cruiser 'S.S. Yorktown,' performing a well-defined and long-range Exploration-Science-Security mission which helps create our format.

You can't take this speck of dust in this midst of all this incredible panorama of birth and complexifying and say...this is the only place that [life] happens. It's like turning your back on the whole idea of growth and evolution.

For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.

In a better world, I can do anything. I'll be there in a better world. In a better world, they will not laugh at me or look down their nose at me.

I think God is as much a basic ingredient in the universe as neutrons and positrons. This is the prime force, when we look around the universe.

It has become a crusade of mine to demonstrate that TV need not be violent to be exciting.

They say that ninety per cent of TV is junk. But ninety per cent of everything is junk.

I'm in a period of growth and expansion. I'm taking long, hard looks at the world and what's happening in it, analyzing and thinking. I'm trying to become acquainted with the universe - with the part of it I occupy - and trying to settle, for myself, what my relationship with it is.

There was much to put out of his mind. Why was it difficult to forget Chekov's astonished delight which greeted him at the command airlock when he boarded. And on the bridge - Kirk! The mere name made Spock groan inwardly as he remembered what it had cost him to turn away from that welcome. T'hy'la!

The present blitz about drugs - I think it looks very much like how we treated insane people 100 years ago -- throw them in the cage - as if that's the whole answer. And it's not the whole answer.

Its seems to me - it's likely that heaven's here right now. If you could take life with its pain and misery, where you fail and you sometimes win, and if you package it into a game, people would pay a fortune to have this game. And I don't know that I'd want it to be resolved so peacefully that the game would be all over.

Matter of internal security - the age-old cry of the oppressor. Picard

I have always been reasonably leery of religion because there are so many edicts in religion, 'thou shalt not,' or 'thou shalt.' I wanted my world of the future to be clear of that.

PICARD: There is no greater challenge than the study of philosophy. WESLEY: But William James won't be in my Starfleet exams. PICARD: The important things never will be. Anyone can be trained in the mechanics of piloting a starship. WESLEY: But Starfleet Academy PICARD: It takes more. Open your mind to the past. Art, history, philosophy. And all this may mean something.

In the fifth season [of Star Trek: The Next Generation] viewers will see more of shipboard life [including] gay crew members in day-to-day circumstances.

When you get into an airplane by yourself and take off, you find yourself in this lovely, three-dimensional world where you can go in any direction. There is no feeling any more exciting than that.

If 'Trek' is a hit, we'd love to do a series of films - a regular event. Look at James Bond's films. They've been around since the early sixties.

I wish I had more control, more like Edgar Rice Burroughs had, but I'm a realist, too. I work in television. I don't know that I would want to spend the rest of my life controlling my characters.