Jean-Luc Picard

"Tea. Earl Grey. Hot."

"Part of having feelings is learning to integrate them into your life, Data, ...learning to live with them. No matter what the circumstances ... Sometimes it takes courage to try, Data. Courage can be an emotion too."

"It's our mortality that defines us, Soran. It's part of the truth of our existence."

"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived. After all, Number One, we're only mortal."

"Reports of my assimilation are greatly exaggerated."

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

"The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!"

"Jean-Luc Picard: It's not too late. Locutus could still be with you, just in the way you wanted. An equal. Let Data go and I will take my place at your side, willingly without any resistance."

"Borg Queen: Such a noble creature. A quality we sometimes lack. We will add your distinctiveness to our own. Welcome home, Locutus. Data, you are free to go."

"Jean-Luc Picard: Mr. Data, lay in a course for the 24th century. I suspect our future is there waiting for us."

"Lieutenant Commander Data: Course laid in, sir."

"Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Make it so."

"How many people does it take, admiral, before it becomes wrong? A thousand? Fifty thousand? A million? How many people DOES IT TAKE, admiral?'"

"Patience. Diplomacy is a very exacting occupation. We will wait."

"If there is one ideal that the Federation holds most dear, it is that all men, all races can be united."

"[voiceover] Captain's Personal Log. The crew has responded with the dedication I've come to expect of them. And like a thousand other commanders on a thousand other battlefields, I wait for the dawn."

"Buried deep within you, beneath all the years of pain and anger, there is something that has never been nurtured: the potential to make yourself a better man. And that is what it is to be human. To make yourself more than you are. Oh, yes — I know you. There was a time you looked at the stars and dreamed of what might be."

"Never, never! You still have a choice. Make the right one now."

"I came here to finde safety. But one is never safe from the past."

"The past is written, but we are left to write the future."

"Let's see what this galaxy class starship can do."

"If we're going to be damned, let's be damned for what we really are."

"Let's see what's out there. Engage."

"Sometimes, Riker, the best way to win a fight is not to be there."

"There can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions."

":[Picard has just been released from Bok's mind control device]"

":Jean-Luc Picard: Bok! Where is Bok?!"

":William Riker: Removed from command, sir. And placed under guard for his act of personal vengeance. Seems there was no profit in it."

":Jean-Luc Picard: In revenge, there never is. Let the dead rest... and the past, remain the past. Enterprise, lock on. Beam me home, Riker."

"I know Hamlet. And what he might say with irony, I say with conviction. „What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!“"

"Things are only impossible until they're not!"

":Jean-Luc Picard: Good. The only person you're truly competing against, Wesley, is yourself."

":Wesley Crusher: Then you're not disappointed?"

":Jean-Luc Picard: Wesley, you have to measure your successes and your failures within, not by anything I or anyone else might think."

"The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules; it is a philosophy ... and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous."

"You say you are true evil? Shall I tell you what true evil is? It is to submit to you. It is when we surrender our freedom, our dignity instead of defying you."

"The challenge, Mister Offenhouse, is to improve yourself. To enrich yourself. Enjoy it."

"Our mission is to go forward, and it's just begun. […] There's still much to do. There's still so much to learn."

":[An alien is impersonating Data.]"

":Alien (as Data): What is death?"

":Jean-Luc Picard: Oh, is that all. Data, you're asking probably the most difficult of all questions. Some see it as a changing into an indestructible form, forever unchanging. They believe that the purpose of the entire universe is to then maintain that form in an Earth-like garden which will give delight and pleasure through all eternity. On the other hand there are those who hold to the idea of our blinking into nothingness with all of our experiences and hopes and dreams merely a delusion."

":Alien (as Data): Which do you believe sir?"

":Jean-Luc Picard: Considering the marvelous complexity of the universe, its clockwork perfection, its balances of this against that... matter, energy, gravitation, time, dimension, I believe that our existence must be more than either of these philosophies. That what we are goes beyond euclidean or other 'practical' measuring systems... and that our existence is part of a reality beyond what we understand now as reality."

"He is different, yes. But that does not make him expendable, or any less significant. No being is so important that he can usurp the rights of another."

"Your Honour, the courtroom is a crucible. In it we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a pure product, the truth for all time."

"Are you prepared to condemn him and all who come after him to servitude and slavery?"

"Your Honour, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. Well, there it sits! Waiting. You wanted a chance to make law. Well, here it is. Make a good one."

"Wesley: It's the Yamato, Captain. I can't stop thinking about her. All those people dead. I don't know how you and Commander Riker and Geordi, how you handle it so easily."

"Mr. La Forge, time is one thing we do not have in abundance."

"Make it so."