Miscellany quotes

View Quote For Gene Roddenberry [Opening dedication text.]

View Quote Hikaru Sulu: My god. Shields. SHIELDS!

View Quote Brigadier Kerla: This is Brigadier Kerla, speaking for the High Command. There has been an incident on Praxis. However, everything is under control. We have no need for assistance. Obey treaty stipulations and remain outside the Neutral Zone. This transmission ends now.
Hikaru Sulu: An "incident."
Janice Rand: Do we report this, sir?
Hikaru Sulu: Are you kidding?

View Quote Spock: Good morning. Two months ago, a Federation starship monitored an explosion on the Klingon moon, Praxis. We believed it was caused by overmining and insufficient safety precautions. The moon's decimation means a deadly pollution of their ozone. They will have depleted their supply of oxygen in approximately 50 Earth years. Due to their enormous military budget, the Klingon economy does not have the resources with which to combat this catastrophe. Last month, at the behest of the Vulcan ambassador, I opened a dialogue with Gorkon, Chancellor of the Klingon High Council. He proposes to commence negotiations at once.
Admiral Cartwright: Negotiations for what?
Spock: The dismantling of our space stations and starbases of along the Neutral Zone, an end to almost 70 years of unremitting hostility which the Klingons can no longer afford.

View Quote Spock: There is an old Vulcan proverb — "Only Nixon could go to China."

View Quote James T. Kirk: They're animals.
Spock: Jim...there is an historic opportunity here.
James T. Kirk: Don't believe them. Don't trust them.
Spock: They are dying.
James T. Kirk: Let them die. Has it occurred to you that this crew is due to stand down in three months? We've done our bit for king and country. You should have trusted me.

View Quote Spock: The lieutenant was the first Vulcan to be graduated at the top of her class at the Academy.
James T. Kirk: You must be very proud.
Valeris: I don't believe so, sir.
Leonard McCoy: She's a Vulcan, all right.

View Quote James T. Kirk: Captain's Log, Stardate 9522.6. I've never trusted Klingons, and I never will. I can never forgive them for the death of my boy. It seems to me our mission to escort the Chancellor of the Klingon High Council to a peace summit is problematic at best. Spock says this could be an historic occasion and I'd like to believe him, but how on Earth can history get past people like me?

View Quote Spock: It is a depiction from ancient Earth mythology—the expulsion from Paradise.
Valeris: Why keep it in your quarters?
Spock: It is a reminder to me that all things end.

View Quote Spock: Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end.

View Quote Pavel Chekov: Guess who's coming to dinner? [Reference to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, a 1967 film.]

View Quote Chancellor Gorkon: I offer a toast. The undiscovered country...the future.
Everyone: The undiscovered country.
Spock: Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1.
Gorkon: You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.
Chang: taH pagh taHbe' [Klingons laugh]

View Quote Chang: "To be or not to be?" That is the question which preoccupies our people, Captain Kirk. We need breathing room.
James T. Kirk: Earth. Hitler, 1938.
Chang: I beg your pardon?
Gorkon: Well...I see we have a long way to go.

View Quote Gorkon: You don't trust me, do you? I don't blame you. If there is to be a brave new world, our generation is going to have the hardest time living in it. [The phrase "brave new world" is from The Tempest, Act V, Scene 1.]

View Quote Chang: Well, most kind. "Parting is such sweet sorrow," hmm, Captain? "Have we not heard the chimes at midnight?" [From Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 2, and Henry IV, Part II, Act 3, Scene 2 (paraphrased), respectively.]

View Quote James T. Kirk: The Enterprise hosted Chancellor Gorkon and company to dinner last night. Our manners weren't exactly Emily Post. Uh, note to the galley-Romulan ale no longer to be served at diplomatic functions.

View Quote Gorkon: [to Kirk] Don't let it end this way, Captain. [last words]

View Quote Chang: What would your favorite author say, Captain? "Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings." [From Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2.]

View Quote James T. Kirk: [recording] I've never trusted Klingons, and I never will. I've never been able to forgive them for the death of my boy.

View Quote Chang: Indeed, the record shows that Captain Kirk once held the rank of admiral, and that Admiral Kirk was broken for taking matters into his own hands in defiance of regulations of the law! Do you deny being demoted for these charges?! Don't wait for the translation! Answer me now! [Similar words were originally spoken by Adlai Stevenson to Valerian Zorin in an emergency session of the United Nations during the Cuban Missile Crisis.]

View Quote Spock: An ancestor of mine maintained that if you eliminate the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. [The fictional character Sherlock Holmes says this in the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle.]

View Quote Commandant: This is the gulag Rura Penthe. There is no stockade. No guard tower. No electronic frontier. Only a magnetic shield prevents beaming. "Punishment" means exile from prison to the surface. On the surface, nothing can survive. [A naked man is dragged out of the prison and thrown into the tundra] Work well, and you will be treated well. Work badly, and you will die. [References to Bridge on the River Kwai and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea]

View Quote [Just after Kirk knocked out an alien in Rura Penthe]
Kirk: I was lucky surprised that guy had knees.
Martia: That was not his knee. [Kirk and McCoy stare at each other in disbelief] Not everyone keeps their genitals in the same place, Captain.
Kirk: Bones, see what you can do for him. Let him know we're not holding a grudge.
Leonard McCoy: Suppose he's holding a grudge?

View Quote Martia: I thought I would assume a pleasing shape. [From Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2]

View Quote Valeris: Four hundred years ago on the planet Earth, workers who felt their livelihood threated by automation flung their wooden shoes called sabots into the machines to stop them.
[Chekov and Uhura look confused]
Valeris: Hence the word sabotage.
Uhura: We are experiencing technical malfunction. All backup systems inoperative.
Chekov: Excellent-I mean, too bad.

View Quote James T. Kirk: I'm a great one for rushing in where angels fear to tread. [Paraphrasing from Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism.]

View Quote Chang: Oh, now, be honest, Captain... warrior to warrior...you do prefer it this way, don't you? As it was meant to be. No peace in our time. Once more unto the breach...dear friends. [From Neville Chamberlain's famous speech after the signing of the Munich Agreement, and Henry V, Act 3, Scene 1, respectively.]

View Quote Chang: Tickle us, do we not laugh? Prick us, do we not bleed? Wrong us...shall we not revenge? [Paraphrased, The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 1.]

View Quote Spock: Doctor, would you care to assist me in performing surgery on a torpedo?
Leonard McCoy: Fascinating.

View Quote Chang: The game's afoot, huh? [wags index finger at weapons officer, signalling him to fire torpedoes] [From Henry V, Act 3, Scene 1 (also a reference to Sherlock Holmes).]

View Quote Chang: Our revels now are ended, Kirk. Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war! [From The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1, and Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 1, respectively.]

View Quote Leonard McCoy: [to Spock] Bet you wish you'd stood in bed.

View Quote [Chang quotes from Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 1.]
Chang: I am constant as the Northern Star...
Leonard McCoy: [to Spock] I'd give real money if he'd [Chang] shut up.

View Quote Chang: To be... or not... to be... [last words]
[From Hamlet, Act III, Scene I]

View Quote Azetbur: What's happened? What's the meaning of all of this?
James T. Kirk: It's about the future, Madame Chancellor. Some people think the future means the end of history. Well...We haven't run out of history quite yet. Your father called the future...the undiscovered country. People can be very frightened of change.
Azetbur: You've restored my father's faith.
James T. Kirk: And you've restored my son's. ["We haven't run out of history quite yet" is a reference to Francis Fukuyama's argument that the end of the Cold War represented "The End of History".]

View Quote Spock: If I were human, I believe my response would be...Go to Hell. [Kirk looks at Spock] If I were human.
Pavel Chekov: Course heading, Captain?
James T. Kirk: Second star to the right... and straight on till morning. [Kirk is paraphrasing J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan.]

View Quote James T. Kirk: [voiceover] Captain's Log, Stardate 9529.1. This is the final cruise of the Starship Enterprise under my command. This ship and her history will shortly become the care of another crew. To them and their posterity will we commit our future. They will continue the voyages we have begun and journey to all the undiscovered countries boldy going where no man, where no one...has gone before. [last lines]