All Quotes

":K'mpec: Nonsense. You are an accomplished mediator. This is no different than any other dispute requiring your services."

"Picard stands as the bearer of Starfleet's conscience and an exemplar of moral autonomy."

"Captain Picard is perceived to be a gentler soul than Captain Kirk."

"When I was in middle school and watching “Star Trek” I imagined we were moving closer toward the show’s version of the future: egalitarian, democratic, creative. Now when I watch the show, I vacillate between hope and escapism. I want to believe that “Star Trek” is predictive of how things will turn out for humanity. I want us to wander the universe in brightly colored uniforms, listening to operas sung by sentient robots. I hope we will find our way to peace. But if that’s not what the future holds, if it’s more war and injustice and greed that we’re headed for, then all I want is to watch Captain Picard hold court on the bridge one more time."

"Seven of Nine: The USS Voyager. She made her name farther out than... any of those other relics had ever gone. I was reborn there. She was my home. Her crew were my family. And now..."

"Seven of Nine: Oh, you are definitely your father's son. He, too, has a knack for the, um, poetic drive-by observation. Can be very annoying. But it can also make a person feel seen."

"The new captain of the Enterprise, Jean-Luc Picard, is the wise man. He rules the Enterprise with a sagely wisdom."

"As shown in his speech and actions, Picard is a man of intelligence, courage, integrity, compassion, courtesy."

"Patrick Stewart's identification with Jean-Luc Picard is a prime exemplar of the extreme entanglement between actor and character produced by cult television programs, yet in Stewart's case this entanglement has not precluded a very active and successful post-Star Trek career."

":Jean-Luc Picard: [waking up after the operation] What the hell are *you* doing here?"

":Kate Pulaski: Saving your life."

":Jean-Luc Picard: Oh, come on. This is a routine procedure - quite commonplace."

":Kate Pulaski: True. But you are not a commonplace man."

"Those ... who are familiar with the character Captain Picard, already know him to be the leader that we all wish we worked for, whose leadership gives us confidence and comfort in meeting the challenges we face each and every day, and the type of leader that we should strive to become."

"Picard and his crew were all human carbon copies of Spock—even-keeled, rational, and almost impossibly ethical. (Spock himself says so of Picard in “Unification,” the one “Next Generation” episode in which he appears.) That left little room for identification. You could aspire to be more like Picard, the very model of compassion and culture, but you could never truly understand his moral universe. He was nothing like us twenty-first-century humans. He was too alien."

":William T. Riker: Wes, responsibility and authority go hand in hand. I know you're responsible, now we've got to teach you a little bit of authority. One of the reasons you've been given command is so you can make a few right decisions, that will establish a pattern of success and help build self-confidence. If you don't trust your own judgment, you don't belong in the command chair."

":Wesley Crusher: But what if I'm wrong?"

":William T. Riker: Then you're wrong. It's arrogant to think you'll never make a mistake."

":Wesley Crusher: But what if it's something really important. I mean, not just a mineral survey. What if someone dies because I made a mistake?"

":William T. Riker: In your position, it's important to ask yourself one question. What would Picard do?"

":Wesley Crusher: He'd listen to everyone's opinion, then make his own decision. But he's Captain Picard."

"He intrigues me, this Picard. Remarkably analytical and dispassionate, for a human. I understand why my father chose to mind-meld with him. There's almost a Vulcan quality to the man."

"The bridge of the Enterprise, under the moderate and controlled command of Captain Picard, is a locus of "enlightened understanding.""

"The new captain, Jean-Luc Picard, was French and enjoyed reading, classical music, William Shakespeare, archaeology, and theatre."

"Captain Picard is not the swashbuckler that Captain Kirk was."

"Only question I Ever thought was hard Was do I like Kirk, Or do I like Picard?"

"As rivers flow into the ocean but cannot make the vast ocean overflow, so flow the streams of the sense-world into the sea of peace that is the sage."

"May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace."

"What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create."

"This is peace, this is the excellent, namely the calm of all the impulses, the casting out of all "basis", the extinction of craving, dispassion, stopping, Nirvana."

"Peace is peaceful."

"Know thyself."

"If a man sings of God and hears of Him, And lets love of God sprout within him, All his sorrows shall vanish, And in his mind, God will bestow abiding peace."

"The question of real, lasting world peace concerns human beings, so basic human feelings are also at its roots. Through inner peace, genuine world peace can be achieved. In this the importance of individual responsibility is quite clear; an atmosphere of peace must first be created within ourselves, then gradually expanded to include our families, our communities, and ultimately the whole planet."

"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

"The course of human history is determined, not by what happens in the skies, but by what takes place in our hearts."

"In the remembrance of God do hearts find satisfaction."

"We talk about world peace. Peace needs to be in the heart of every human being because that is where it belongs."

"Before we can make friends with anyone else, we must first make friends with ourselves."

"I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience."

"Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not."

"The Buddha taught that even your happiness is dukkha -a Pali word meaning "suffering" or "unsatisfactoriness." It is inseparable from its opposite. This means that your happiness and unhappiness are in fact one. Only the illusion of time separates them. This is not being negative. It is simply recognizing the nature of things, so that you don't pursue an illusion for the rest of your life. p. 117"

"The whole advertising industry and consumer society would collapse if people became enlightened and no longer sought to find their identity through things. The more you seek happiness in this way, the more it will elude you. p. 118"

"I have learned to offer no resistance to what is; I have learned to allow the present moment to be and to accept the impermanent nature of all things and conditions. Thus have I found peace. To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them - while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease. The happiness that is derived from some secondary source is never very deep. It is only a pale reflection of the joy of Being, the vibrant peace that you find within as you enter the state of nonresistance. Being takes you beyond the polar opposites of the mind and frees you from dependency on form. Even if everything were to collapse and crumble all around you, you would still feel a deep inner core of peace. You may not be happy, but you will be at peace."

"... in the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards."

"Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating."

"With uncertainty in one scale, courage and self-confidence should be thrown into the other to correct the balance. The greater they are, the greater the margin that can be left for accidents."

"Blind aggressiveness would destroy the attack itself, not the defense."

"This is the Spirit of Infinite Peace, and the moment we come into harmony with it there comes to us an inflowing tide of peace, for peace is harmony. A deep interior meaning underlies the great truth, "To be spiritually minded is life and peace." To recognize the fact that we are spirit, and to live in this thought, is to be spiritually minded, and so to be in harmony and peace. Oh, the thousands of men and women all about us weary with care, troubled and ill at ease, running hither and thither to find peace, weary in body, soul, and mind; going to other countries, traveling the world over, coming back, and still not finding it. Of course they have not found it and they never will find it in this way, because they are looking for it where it is not. They are looking for it without when they should look within. Peace is to be found only within, and unless one find it there he will never find it at all. Peace lies not in the external world. It lies within one's own soul. We may travel over many different avenues in pursuit of it, we may seek it through the channels of the bodily appetites and passions, we may seek it through all the channels of the external, we may chase for it hither and thither, but it will always be just beyond our grasp, because we are searching for it where it is not."

"To be at one with God is to be at peace. The child simplicity is the greatest agency in bringing this full and complete realization, the child simplicity that recognizes its true relations with the Father's life. There are people I know who have come into such a conscious realization of their oneness with this Infinite Life, this Spirit of Infinite Peace, that their lives are fairly bubbling over with joy."