Gene Roddenberry Quotes - Page 2

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.'

'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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.