10 Star Trek Quotes That Made Us Trekkies
2. "Well, Here's One Thing You Can Be Sure Of, Mister."
If there's ever a time to bring out the phrase 'Gene Roddenberry's vision' and mean it, it's now. Balance of Terror is an episode that, in and of itself, no doubt made a good number of us life-long Trekkies and continues to do so. It gave us our dramatic first look at the Romulans, but it also laid out — in only four lines of dialogue — what is Star Trek's moral core.
The "Mister" Captain Kirk was addressing/dressing down was Lieutenant Stiles. Once the similarities between the Romulan and Vulcan peoples had been revealed, Stiles began to direct his misplaced hatred at Spock. Kirk's response was unequivocal: "Leave any bigotry in your quarters. There's no room for it on the bridge. Do I make myself clear?"
Gene Roddenberry's vision of a hopeful future in which no form of intolerance is tolerated and where, on the contrary, diversity is celebrated is by far the most powerful part of Star Trek. As Roddenberry also once said:
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, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.
For the best of quotes, what makes us Trekkies is that, even though we might not have gotten there yet, we try to bring Roddenberry's hope for a better future into as much of the present as we can.