Star Trek: 10 Greatest Captain Kirk Speeches
5. What Is A Man?
Harcourt Fenton Mudd would hardly be the character with whom anyone might imagine the deepest of philosophical conversations. The man is an open con-man and trickster. Perhaps one could admire his honesty in his dishonesty but, when it comes to what defines humanity, Kirk still says it best.
What is a man but that lofty spirit, that sense of enterprise, that devotion to something that cannot be sensed, cannot be realized but only dreamed! The highest reality.
Mudd had stumbled across of world of androids who seemed determined to serve humanity. By serve, they believed that replacing human bodies with android copies would be a vast improvement. They were entirely alone in this - some of the Enterprise crew, Uhura and Chekov included, seem tempted by the promise of long-life.
However, Kirk believes that his humanity is tied, at least in part, to the physical form in which he exists. As part of the attempt to escape the world, he delivers the above speech, though still part of a plot to bamboozle Norman - the android running the show. It is passionate, and it is earnest. It, combined with a plan of prolonged nonsense from the crew, aid in overloading the android minds around them. In that, humanity seems to excel. We can certainly handle nonsense better than anyone else out there.