Star Trek was an attempt to say 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 lifeforms.If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, than we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.

[on his first meeting with Leonard Nimoy] If I ever do a science-fiction show, I'm going to put pointed ears on him and use him.

These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five year mission... to boldly go where no man has gone before.

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

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.

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.

Normal television limits what you can do. With science fiction, you can exercise your imagination more. I fell in love with it.

I have felt many times trapped by Star Trek. It cost me dearly. It won't anymore, because I've come to grips with what it is and where it fits in my life.

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.