Gene Roddenberry Quotes

“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.”

“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.”

“The question of consciousness has always intrigued me. It starts with the question, 'Are we our bodies or are we our consciousness? What are we made up of?”

“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.”

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

“I do not belong to any church, but I do consider myself a religious man…part of the creative and intelligence behind life. Therefore, if we are part of God than our lives are not brief meaningless things, but rather have a great importance and significance.”

“I have had so much trouble with emotion in my life I thought it just would be fun to write someone who didn't have that problem.”

“That's been a question, one of the big questions in my life. 'What is a human?' What are the elements that make a human?' It's a search for… how many elements do you get before you say, "Yes, it's human," where before you were saying it's not human.”

“I think I’ve gone through quite an ordinary series of steps in life. I began as most children began, with God and Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny all being about the same thing. Then I went through the things that I think sensitive people go through, wrestling with the thoughts of Jesus—did he shit? Did he screw? I began to dare to believe that God wasn’t some white beard. I began to look upon the miseries of the human race and to think God was not as simple as my mother said. As nearly as I can concentrate on the question today, I believe I am God; certainly you are, I think we intelligent beings on this planet are all a piece of God, are becoming God. In some sort of cyclical non-time thing we have to become God, so that we can end up creating ourselves, so that we can be in the first place. … My own feeling is that relation to God as a person is a petty, superstitious approach to the All, the infinite.”

“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.”

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

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

“Can all this just be an accident? Or could there be some alien intelligence behind it?”

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

“I think God is as much a basic ingredient in the universe as neutrons and positrons... God is, for lack of a better term, clout. This is the prime force, when we look around the universe.”

“The glory of creation is in its infinite diversity.”

“He was a chiseler who wanted a cut of outside money his cast earned, demanded to be called ‘master,’ and prohibited poor Nimoy from using a company pencil.”

“Time is the fire in which we burn.”

“No one could know Serling, or view or read his work, without recognizing his deep affection for humanity, his sympathetically enthusiastic curiosity about us, and his determination to enlarge our horizons by giving us a better understanding of ourselves. He dreamed of much for us, and demanded much of himself, perhaps more than was possible for either in this time and place. But it is that quality of dreams and demands that makes the ones like Rod Serling rare …and always irreplaceable.”

“He looked at me and said, ‘The difference between your agent and me is that your agent can’t get you out of here at five o’clock on Friday and I can. And all it’ll cost you is twenty percent ”
“‘Gene, I can’t do that to this agent,’ I said. ‘He got me the job.'”
“And then he said, and I will never forget his exact words, ‘Well, you’re just going to have to learn how to bow down and say master.'”

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

“Science fiction is a beautiful game, and a beautiful experience.”

“We're capable of great things. And I've no doubt that the creature that follows us will be capable of even more. Evolution didn't stop with us: "Oh great and beautiful mankind! We've made it!" We haven't. Evolution can go on forever.”

“Let me dream.”