Star Trek’s Most Amazing and Motivational Quotes - Captain's Edition

To Boldly Go…

Star Trek has been a mainstay in world culture for two generations. For many, the show represents humanity’s best possible future. For others, it has inspired them to change the present.

The show has been filled with moments of wisdom, insight, and motivation. Here are some of its finest quotes. We will start with Captain quotes today. I will do another post in the near future with memorable quotes from other characters.

Did I miss your favorite captain quote? Let me know in the comments below.

Captain James T. Kirk

1. 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.

2. Sometimes a feeling is all we humans have to go on.

3. How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life.

4. Without freedom of choice, there’s no creativity. The body dies.

5. You know the greatest danger facing us is ourselves, an irrational fear of the unknown. But there’s no such thing as the unknown — only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood.

6. We’re human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands! But we can stop it. We can admit that we’re killers . . . but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! Knowing that we’re not going to kill — today!

7. Intuition, however illogical, is recognized as a command prerogative.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard

1. There is a way out of every box, a solution to every puzzle; it’s just a matter of finding it. Things are only impossible, until they’re not.

2. Order a man to turn is child over to the state? Not while I’m his captain.

3. Well… perhaps what we most needed was a kick in our complacency – to prepare us for what lies ahead.

4. It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.

5. No being is so important that he can usurp the rights of another.

6. We are what we are, and we’re doing the best we can. It is not for you to set the standards by which we should be judged!

7. Time is a companion that goes with us on a journey. It reminds us to cherish each moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we have lived.

8. Seize the time... Live now! Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.

9. The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.

10. You cannot explain away a wantonly immoral act because you think that it is connected to some higher purpose.

Mr. Spock

1. Live long and prosper. Peace and long life.

2. Insufficient facts always invite danger.

3. Insults are effective only where emotion is present.

4. After a time, you may find that “having” is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as “wanting.” It is not logical, but it is often true.

5. Without followers, evil cannot spread.

6. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.

7. Curious how often you humans seem to obtain that which you do not want.

8. Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them.

9. When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

10. Logic is the beginning of wisdom not the end.

Captain Benjamin Sisko

1. There’s an old saying, “Fortune favors the bold.” Well, I guess we’re about to find out.

2. It is the unknown that defines our existence. We are constantly searching not just for answers, but for new questions. We are explorers.

3. There comes a time in every man’s life when he must stop thinking and start doing.

4. Even in your darkest moments, you can always find something that will make you smile.

5. There is more to baseball than physical strength. It's, uh... it's about courage; and it's also about faith; and it is also about heart.

Captain Kathryn Janeway

1. Logic can be used to justify just about anything. That is its power and its flaw.

2. We seek out new races because we want to, not because we’re following protocols. We have an insatiable curiosity about the universe.

3. Some professors like students who challenge their assumptions, B’Elanna. And so do some captains. I dread the day that everyone on this ship agrees with me.

4. If you want to get in the mud, you can’t start complaining that you might get dirty.

5. Fear exists for one reason; to be conquered.

6. Who are we to swoop in, play god, and then continue on our way without the slightest consideration of the long term effects of our actions?

7. It's never easy...but if we turn our backs on our principles we stop being human.

8. I've become convinced that we've got to stick to our principles, not abandon them…If the alternative means becoming thieves and killers ourselves...

Captain Jonathan Archer

1. Starfleet could have sent a probe out here, to make maps and take pictures, but they didn't. They sent us, so that we could explore with our own senses.

2. Some day, my people are going to come up with some sort of a doctrine, something that tells us what we can and can't do out here, should and shouldn't do. But until somebody tells me that they have drafted that directive, I'm going to have to remind myself that we didn't come out here to play god.

3. I don't know much about Vulcan ethics but Humans don't throw morality out the window when things start getting a little rough.

4. Why are you so surprised? Whenever a group of people start believing they're better than everybody else, the results are always the same.

5. Maybe you've evolved into beings with abilities I can't comprehend. But you've paid a hell of a price. You've lost compassion and empathy, things that give life meaning. If that's what it takes to be advanced, I don't want any part of it.

6. Up until about a hundred years ago, there was one question that burned in every human, that made us study the stars and dream of travelling to them, 'Are we alone?' Our generation is privileged to know the answer to that question. We are all explorers, driven to know what's over the horizon, what's beyond our own shores. And yet, the more I've experienced, the more I've learned that no matter how far we travel, or how fast we get there, the most profound discoveries are not necessarily beyond that next star. They're within us, woven into the threads that bind us, all of us, to each other. A final frontier begins in this hall. Let's explore it together.