Klingon Quotes

Crazy like he's a serial killer, or crazy like he attends Star Trek conventions in full costume?" "That's only crazy if you dress like a Klingon," I pointed out.

Romulan or Vulcan?' the ushers asked each guest. Marion, who had been poised to say 'friends of the bride' had responded to the question with an open-mouthed stare, and Jay Omega answered, 'Klingon!" which got them seats in the back row of the Romulan side.

What kind of a world do we live in that has room for dog yoga but not for Esperanto?

The job of the linguist, like that of the biologist or the botanist, is not to tell us how nature should behave, or what its creations should look like, but to describe those creations in all their messy glory and try to figure out what they can teach us about life, the world, and, especially in the case of linguistics, the workings of the human mind.

Insert quarter, avoid Klingons.

It’s called the Pyxis,” said Raven. “Don’t let the fancy name intimidate you. It just means ‘box’ in one of those Old Earth languages, Roman or Spanish or Klingon…

Being in an M.F.A. is like living in a sci-fi biosphere on an alien planet, where everyone shares your obscure visionary notions: namely, that literature matters, that English professors know more than other people, that typing, alone, in a library, is what everyone should be doing on a Friday night. Better to tell strangers that speaking Klingon is what turns you on.

Before you judge me as some kind of 'anything goes' language heathen, let me just say that I'm not against usage standards. I don't violate them when I want to sound like an educated person, for the same reason I don't wear a bikini to a funeral when I want to look like a respectful person. There are social conventions for the way we do lots of things, and it is to everyone's benefit to be familiar with them. But logic ain't got nothin' to do with it.

Nothing like that warm and fuzzy Soviet architecture ... Pretty much as close to the Klingon home world as you're gonna get.

Kirk: How close will we come to the nearest Klingon outpost if we continue on our present course? Chekov: Vun parsec, sir. Close enough to smell them. Spock: That is illogical, ensign. Odors cannot travel through the vacuum of space. Chekov: I vas making a little joke, sir. Spock: Extremely little, ensign.

How many Lojbanists does it take to change a broken light-bulb?” goes the old Lojban joke. “Two: one to decide what to change it into and one to decide what kind of bulb emits broken light.

You want me to be your spy in a game of restaurant espionage? Will I need a code name?" "It's nothing morally reprehensible or anything, " Wes hastened to assure her. "Just curiosity." "I think your code name should be Tiberius," she said decisively. "I'll be Uhura." "Tiberius? As in James Tiberius Kirk?" Wes blinked, then grinned. "Oh my God, this is your version of flirting. How do you say 'I fancy you' in Klingon?

Star Trek was about social justice from day one -- the stories were about the human pursuit for a better world, a better way of being, the next step up the ladder of sentience. The stories weren't about who we were going to fight, but who we were going to make friends with. It wasn't about defining an enemy -- it was about creating a new partnership. That's why when Next Gen came along, we had a Klingon on the bridge.

Those are Klingon and Federation ships," I said. "You're a nerd, Shelton, but, holy crap, do I love this.

When I reached the bar, I ordered a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster from the female Klingon bartender and downed half of it.

You’re my Princess Leah! I’m a Klingon and you’re a female Klingon.

it was considerably better than my current defensive armament, which consisted of harsh words and heavy disapproval. Probably not effective against Klingons. Spike

The variety of shape, pattern, and color found in the languages of the world is a testament to the wonder of nature, to the breathtaking array of possibilities that can emerge, tangled and wild, from the fertile human endowments of brain and larynx, intelligence and social skills.

Because I tried all those voice options, of course. Haven’t you?” She looked at him expectantly, as if scrolling through all the language and voice options in the GPS was a total must. “Frankly? It didn’t occur to me. I stuck with the first one.” She rolled her eyes. “There’s one in Klingon. I used to have it on when I drove my geekier friends to the yearly Star Trek conventions in Vegas. They’d translate for me.” He wasn’t sure which part of her statement was more disturbing to him: the friends that spoke Klingon, or the yearly visits to Star Trek conventions. Or that she had geekier friends. Finally he opted for one. “You have friends that speak Klingon?” She shook her head. “No. Not fluently, no. It helped a lot that from LA to Vegas is for the most part a straight line. You really don’t want to get lost in the Mojave Desert with a handful of bickering Klingons and Vulcans who can achieve global domination with a laptop but can’t figure out how to change a tire on the car.

The president has listened to some people, the so-called Vulcans in the White House, the ideologues. But you know, unlike the Vulcans of Star Trek who made the decisions based on logic and fact, these guys make it on ideology. These aren't Vulcans. There are Klingons in the White House. But unlike the real Klingons of Star Trek, these Klingons have never fought a battle of their own. Don't let faux Klingons send real Americans to war.

Dirk an I tried to learn Klingon, but it sounded like we were choking on cabbage. The Neighbors called nine-one-one

I can’t even believe what I’m hearing,” I muttered more to myself than to him. It was like Chewbacca speaking Klingon. Does. Not. Compute. Okay. Don’t freak out on him.

The Atari experience helped shape Jobs’s approach to business and design. He appreciated the user-friendliness of Atari’s insert-quarter-avoid-Klingons games. “That simplicity rubbed off on him

When I reached the bar, I ordered a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster from the female Klingon bartender and downed half of it. Then I grinned as R2 cued up another classic ’80s tune. “ ‘Union of the Snake,

The books that I found in the library, ones that I deeply understood and ones that seemed so outside of my experience they might as well have been written in Klingon, all carried the same hopes: to be seen, to be heard, to exist.

Apparently this was based on postings on the Internet, and I thought it all ridiculous, not quite sure who these Ripperologists were. I joked that their threat brought to mind Klingons in formation ready to fire upon the U.S.S. Enterprise.

I sympathize with the guys who went to go see The Phantom Menace and convinced themselves that it wasn’t as bad as it was. Phantom Menace is worse, I would argue, than Star Trek ever was, but we were kind of in denial. There were some beautiful shots of the Enterprise and we got to see some Klingons, so it wasn’t a total disaster, but in large part it was pretty boring.

At one stage in the history of English, the past tenses of verbs were marked by a regular vowel change process; instead of “help/helped,” we had “help/holp.” Over time, -ed became the preferred way to mark the past tense, and eventually the past tense of most verbs was formed by adding -ed. But the old pattern was preserved in verbs like “eat/ate,” “give/gave,” “take/ took,” “get/got”—verbs that are used very often, and so are more entrenched as a linguistic habit (the very frequently used “was/ were” is a holdover from an even older pattern). They became irregular because the world changed around them.

Jake, did you see anything? I didn’t.” “Nothing, Captain.” “Astrogator?” “Just blankness. Please, can we have the lights on?” I flipped on the overhead lights. “Science Officer?” “USS Enterprise being chased by a Klingon cruiser.” “Sharpie, that’s a false report. The Enterprise doesn’t run from just one Klingon cruiser.” “It was going boldly where no man has gone before. Aside from that, I didn’t see a thing. Let’s try another universe; this one stinks.

The Human stared, then laughed shortly. “I suppose I have gone on a bit. Tell your people that not all Humans want their territory, and endless rounds of gunboat diplomacy and saber-rattling.” [...] Krenn said, “If you wish, I will take that message. But there is something I ought to tell you. We have a word, komerex: your translator has probably told you it means ‘Empire,’ but what it means truly is ‘the structure that grows.’ It has an opposite, khesterex: ‘the structure that dies.’ We are taught—by those you wish to receive your story—that there are no other cultures than these. And in my years as a Captain, I have seen nothing to indicate that my teaching was wrong. There are only Empires…and kuve.” Krenn saw Grandisson’s long jaw go slack; he knew how the Human’s machine had translated the last word. “And this is the change you say you wish to make in yourselves…. “So, yes, Mr. Grandisson, if you wish I will take your message. But I tell you now: there are none Klingon who will believe it.

Will you see Dad when you get back?” “Yes,” said Miral, without having to pause to think about it. B’Elanna was startled by the swift response. “Enough time has passed so that there should not be pain. And if there is then we will simply have to push through it. The child you and your husband have borne carries both our blood. It is foolish to let years of personal resentment deny the girl our wisdom.” Torres stared. Sometimes, when you least expected it, Klingons could be so very practical. • • • Seven

Lip was in his element. Him and his languages. His linguistic abilities didn’t just stop at Pig Latin, like the rest of us. He was also pretty savvy with the computer kind. Pascal, Basic, JavaScript, those were child’s play to him. He knew the completely worthless programming languages, as well. Like IronPython, IPTSCRAE, TenCore, SystemVerilog; some of the names were so ridiculous they sounded like Klingon gibberish: “Metalua, KUKA, Nemerle…” Because you never knew when you’d need to communicate with a toaster.

At Starfleet Academy, there is a simulated test for trainee crews called the Kobayashi Maru, named after a ship marooned in the Klingon Neutral Zone. Your job is to decide whether to try and rescue it, thereby risking war with the Klingons, or sacrifice it to collateral damage. It’s a purpose-built no-win situation designed to show that sometimes decisions needing to be made don’t necessarily have a clear-cut right and wrong road, a best course of action and a worst course of action. Some things you can’t win –it’s how you don’t win that counts. If you’re going to not win, then do it with style, integrity and aplomb. Not with misery, depression and defeat. Not by cheating the system the way Kirk did –by surreptitiously reprogramming the simulator so that it was possible to rescue the freighter. The irony is, he was awarded a commendation, for ‘original thinking’. The Kobayashi Maru wasn’t one for fancy semantic solutions. Nor was it for cheating on; that defeated the lesson to be learned. It was to prove a point. That you can’t win ’em all, champ.

People who don't empower your goals are human headwind bloviators. They add friction to the journey. When you spout excitement over actions or ideas, bloviators react with doubt and disbelief and use conditioned talking points such as, “Oh that won't work,” “Someone is already doing it,” and “Why bother?” In motivational circles, they call them “dream stealers.” You must turn your back on them. Every entrepreneur has bloviators in their life. Network marketers consider me a bloviator. These people are normal obstacles to the Fastlane road trip. Remember, these people have been socially conditioned to believe in the preordained path. They don't know about The Fastlane, nor do they believe it. Anything outside of that box is foreign, and when you talk Fastlane, you may as well be speaking Klingon. As a producer, you are the minority, while consumers are the rest. To be unlike “everyone” (who isn't rich), you (who will be rich) require a strong defense; otherwise, their toxicity infects your mindset. Commiserating with habitual, negative, limited thinkers is treasonous. Uncontrolled, these headwinds lead directly to the couch and the video game console. Yes, the old, “If you hang out with dogs, you get fleas.” This dichotomy[…]

That, for a while, seemed like life. And if I was really being honest with myself, I wasn’t into it. The only option was to sit in the pews every Sunday at church and casually wonder if I was going to go to hell because of who I was? No, thank you. Or to understand that the structures on which the country was built were engineered against me? Hard pass. What choice did I have besides constantly code-switching between identities as a means of hiding in plain sight? And wasn’t it just normal to feel like such a mistake as an adult that every time I walked over a bridge or stood on a subway platform, I had to talk myself out of stepping over the edge? I came to believe I was a monster and that I deserved to feel the way I felt. And I didn’t want to turn the page. But through it all there was a constant tethering me to the idea of a future: the library. The library is the place where I could borrow first Grover’s philosophical tome, then a couple of Choose Your Own Adventures I could cheat at, and later a stack of mysteries I could spoil for myself, all attempts to look for some other way of understanding who I was. In the book stacks, I found The Bluest Eye and The Color Purple and Giovanni’s Room and David Rakoff’s Fraud and more. I saw a new vision of Otherness in those books, and the pages kept turning. At the end of every one was a wall waiting to be broken down—a lurch toward becoming—a new paragraph in a story with an ending far different from what I’d ever dared imagine. Every story, whether truth or fiction, is an invitation to imagination, but even more so, it’s an invitation to empathy. The storyteller says, “I am here. Does it matter?” The words that I found in these books were a person calling out from a page, “I am worthy of being heard and you are worthy of hearing my story.” It seems simple but it’s a bold declaration. How many times in life do we receive the message, implicit or explicit, that what we’ve experienced or what we feel isn’t noteworthy or remarkable? The books that I found in the library, ones that I deeply understood and ones that seemed so outside of my experience they might as well have been written in Klingon, all carried the same hopes: to be seen, to be heard, to exist.

ever. Amen. Thank God for self-help books. No wonder the business is booming. It reminds me of junior high school, where everybody was afraid of the really cool kids because they knew the latest, most potent putdowns, and were not afraid to use them. Dah! But there must be another reason that one of the best-selling books in the history of the world is Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus by John Gray. Could it be that our culture is oh so eager for a quick fix? What a relief it must be for some people to think “Oh, that’s why we fight like cats and dogs, it is because he’s from Mars and I am from Venus. I thought it was just because we’re messed up in the head.” Can you imagine Calvin Consumer’s excitement and relief to get the video on “The Secret to her Sexual Satisfaction” with Dr. GraySpot, a picture chart, a big pointer, and an X marking the spot. Could that “G” be for “giggle” rather than Dr. “Graffenberg?” Perhaps we are always looking for the secret, the gold mine, the G-spot because we are afraid of the real G-word: Growth—and the energy it requires of us. I am worried that just becoming more educated or well-read is chopping at the leaves of ignorance but is not cutting at the roots. Take my own example: I used to be a lowly busboy at 12 East Restaurant in Florida. One Christmas Eve the manager fired me for eating on the job. As I slunk away I muttered under my breath, “Scrooge!” Years later, after obtaining a Masters Degree in Psychology and getting a California license to practice psychotherapy, I was fired by the clinical director of a psychiatric institute for being unorthodox. This time I knew just what to say. This time I was much more assertive and articulate. As I left I told the director “You obviously have a narcissistic pseudo-neurotic paranoia of anything that does not fit your myopic Procrustean paradigm.” Thank God for higher education. No wonder colleges are packed. What if there was a language designed not to put down or control each other, but nurture and release each other to grow? What if you could develop a consciousness of expressing your feelings and needs fully and completely without having any intention of blaming, attacking, intimidating, begging, punishing, coercing or disrespecting the other person? What if there was a language that kept us focused in the present, and prevented us from speaking like moralistic mini-gods? There is: The name of one such language is Nonviolent Communication. Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication provides a wealth of simple principles and effective techniques to maintain a laser focus on the human heart and innocent child within the other person, even when they have lost contact with that part of themselves. You know how it is when you are hurt or scared: suddenly you become cold and critical, or aloof and analytical. Would it not be wonderful if someone could see through the mask, and warmly meet your need for understanding or reassurance? What I am presenting are some tools for staying locked onto the other person’s humanness, even when they have become an alien monster. Remember that episode of Star Trek where Captain Kirk was turned into a Klingon, and Bones was freaking out? (I felt sorry for Bones because I’ve had friends turn into Cling-ons too.) But then Spock, in his cool, Vulcan way, performed a mind meld to determine that James T. Kirk was trapped inside the alien form. And finally Scotty was able to put some dilithium crystals into his phaser and destroy the alien cloaking device, freeing the captain from his Klingon form. Oh, how I wish that, in my youth or childhood,

I cannot believe I have been duped, not once but twice. My three years gaining a degree in psychology was clearly a waste of time. I might as well have studied Klingon.

Death is the one foe that everyone faces, the one foe that never loses.

After all, it’s pretty hard to be prejudiced against blacks and gays when you’re a-okay with Klingons and the Green Men of Mars.

Despair covered me like a Klingon invisibility cloak.

Nurse Cruickshank trundled off, thermometer gripped in her hand like she was expecting Klingons to appear from underneath the hospital beds. In my opinion, even if they had, she wouldn’t have needed to worry about anything. They would have either immediately started crooning love poetry or just prostrated themselves in respect for a terrible and vengeful Goddess.

Georgians are a combination of Klingons and Apaches. They are warriors, men from another millennium who get along very well with the United States because they think the rest of Europe are a bunch of wimps.” The prominent highway between the airport and downtown Tbilisi, he noted, is named George W. Bush Street in honor of a 2005 visit by the American president. “They love Bush. He mispronounces words and starts wars. What’s not to like?

In this corner of the universe, we are the Klingons.” - War Amongst the Stars: A Brief History of Post-Contact America, by Admiral Hubert De Grasso (ret.),

Why do that?” Mandi asked. “It seems like if you spent a bazillion dollars on a big house with a gorgeous view, you’d want to show it off.” “The same reason that the Klingons have a cloaking device,” Murphy answered. “I’m sorry, Murphy, I have a life.” Mandi’s tone was disdainful.

The first video game based on a movie or television series is probably Mike Mayfield’s 1971 text-only game Star Trek, a strategy game about commanding the USS Enterprise against the Klingons. But Mayfield created the game as a hobbyist on a Sigma 7 minicomputer, a device that required as much space as several refrigerators. It hardly seemed to be at risk of becoming a commercial product.

But she wasn’t, and here she was again in the middle of a situation that called for fake smiles and bullshitting, two talents that were as alien to her as a Klingon mating dance.

The Klingons are not calling to the warriors within us to seek out death. They are calling us to live every moment of every day as our best selves, so that should death arrive unbidden, we may face it without regret.

He also knew the language of The Klingons, but the army had no use for it.

All this fighting stems from the illusion that people choose to learn a language for rational reasons, that they are looking for the language that has the most useful features, the best agenda. But no one is out there comparison shopping for an artificial language. They find what they like, and there's no accounting for taste.

He loves it all anyway, as his first life as a teenager never allowed. Everything is different this time. On Sundays his mother’s lengthy grace doesn’t grate on him. This time he savors each one At high school he recalls who wrote poetry in Klingon, who sold dope, who was really gay and thought nobody knew. Friends, long forgotten by his late forties. As they pass by him again, he has a sad appreciation of how fleeting it all is.

The ship would have to rotate on its center of mass to aim, and I’d have to cut off the ship’s drive momentarily when firing, but it was considerably better than my current defensive armament, which consisted of harsh words and heavy disapproval. Probably not effective against Klingons.

And these acid adventures, they came in those days and they went, some we gave away and forgot, others sad to say turned out to be fugitive of false-but with luck one or two would get saved to go back to at certain later moments in life. This look from brand-new Prairie-oh, you, huh?-would be there for Zoyd more than once in years to come, to help him through those times when the Klingons are closing, and the helm won't answer, and the warp engine's out of control.

Essay: Scientific Advances are Ruining Science Fiction I write science fiction thrillers for a living, set five to ten years in the future, an exercise that allows me to indulge my love of science, futurism, and philosophy, and to examine in fine granularity the impact of approaching revolutions in technology. But here is the problem: I’d love to write pure science fiction, set hundreds of years in the future. Why don’t I? I guess the short answer is that to do so, I’d have to turn a blind eye to everything I believe will be true hundreds of years from now. Because the truth is that books about the future of humanity, such as Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near, have ruined me. As a kid, I read nothing but science fiction. This was a genre that existed to examine individuals and societies through the lens of technological and scientific change. The best of this genre always focused on human beings as much as technology, something John W. Campbell insisted upon when he ushered in what is widely known as the Golden Age of Science Fiction. But for the most part, writers in past generations could feel confident that men and women would always be men and women, at least for many thousands of years to come. We might develop technology that would give us incredible abilities. Go back and forth through time, travel to other dimensions, or travel through the galaxy in great starships. But no matter what, in the end, we would still be Grade A, premium cut, humans. Loving, lusting, and laughing. Scheming and coveting. Crying, shouting, and hating. We would remain ambitious, ruthless, and greedy, but also selfless and heroic. Our intellects and motivations in this far future would not be all that different from what they are now, and if we lost a phaser battle with a Klingon, the Grim Reaper would still be waiting for us.

The same reason that the Klingons have a cloaking device,” Murphy

Vanora rolled her eyes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m the epitome of a cultured young woman.” “I’d believe that if you were raised by Klingons in their culture.” Vanora

Quark was definitely going to have to find out more about his nephew’s new friend.  The son of the Emissary, now the son of Charivretha zh’Thane; Nog apparently had an instinct for choosing powerful friends . . . . . . and if he doesn’t want to exploit it himself, why shouldn’t somebody else benefit? All this and the task force would be arriving soon, fresh blood for his dabo girls and many a merry Klingon getting roaring drunk on bloodwine. It seemed he’d been mistaken about something he’d said, only a day or two ago; the Federation really did care about the small-business man, after all. *

Kira watched them talk and noticed how they quickly fell into the easy give-and-take of Starfleet-trained information exchange. It was a skill she had always admired in Sisko,  Jadzia, O’Brien, and Julian, but hadn’t imagined it extended to all Starfleet officers, even former ones like Ro. Klingons don’t do this, she mused. Or the Romulans or the Cardassians.  They have their own methods, their own martial cultures, but nothing that can compete with this. Ro

They celebrated in a bar, and after half a dozen cocktails came to the mutual decision that it would be a blast to get married. So Lisa bought a couple of rings in a pawnshop and they did the deed in the hotel chapel, reading their vows in Klingon off an iPhone in front of a guy in golden robes and Spock ears.

I think back to the parties Aimee and I planned, and how all those tuxedos and ball gowns weren't really that much different, costumewise, than some of these getups. Not as elaborate or out there, to be sure, but not so different. After all, is an hour at Bobbi Brown for the perfect party makeup that much of a stretch from an hour putting on a Klingon forehead or Spock ears? Is searching for the perfect dress, shoes, bag, wrap, jewelry so much different from the perfect jumpsuit, ray gun, ammo belt, and communicator? And unlike most of the regular parties we did, these people are way open to each other and the experience. There don't seem to be gaggles of people standing back to judge the other gaggles. And while a lot of the subsets do seem to flock together, Star Wars over here, Lord of the Rings over there, I haven't overheard one snarky comment about someone's costume. None of the women here, in all of their variety of shapes and sizes, seem to be doing anything other than squeeing at each other and praising how gorgeous they are. And everyone seems to just own themselves. I've been at hundreds of events looking at a sea of black dresses because everyone thinks it is slimming. But today I've seen a riot of color and skin. Including a 350-pound raven-haired vixen in a chain-mail corset, with cleavage you could park a hovercraft in, surrounded by a coterie of clearly smitten men. I wanted to high-five her.

By the end of the night, Hannah was talking about Vulcans and Klingons and warp speed travel. Clara couldn’t help but feel just a bit proud of herself. By the end of the week, they were finished with Kirk and Spock and on to Picard and Riker. Within a few weeks, they would be on to Sisko and Janeway, too, and Hannah would scribble the Bird-of-Prey in her notebook and think of the stars.

He suggested that people test the language by writing to a friend in a foreign land, enclosing a small leaflet with the translations of a few roots and affixes, and leaving it up to the recipient to make sense of it.

How is Redbreast’s Dad like a piece of toilet paper? He circles Uranus, looking for Klingons.

Please don't compare me with your militant atheists - in their intellectualist world there is no place for anything that cannot be logically explained, whereas the world I dream of, is built upon a healthy interaction between facts and fairytale. I want it to be a living planet for living beings, not a giant data center packed with computers with feet. If all we needed was facts, the world would've become a utopia the moment computer was invented. Likewise, if all we needed was fairytale, the world would've turned into a paradise the moment sanskrit, hebrew or klingon was invented. There can be no lasting peace and harmony, until facts and fairytale work hand in hand, while boldly rejecting blind superstition, as well as cold logicality.

If white people can learn Klingon, they can learn to pronounce your name.

All Roads Lead to Aum (The Sonnet) God needs no man, Because (hu)man is God. God is a mythical lie, Godliness is not. Oneness is Godliness, Godliness is oneness. World without oneness, is a manifestation mindless. Oneness is the Noor, Oneness is Kabbalah. Oneness is Aum, Oneness is Nirvana. All roads lead to Aum, Whether you speak sanskrit, latin or klingon. Light up the noor at the altar of heart, Finally as true sapiens a common ape will dawn.

You think you’re gonna cast me aside for Caleb and his weird Klingon cock?

When it comes to special interests, Autistic brains are total sponges, absorbing facts and figures at a rate that seems kind of inhuman to neurotypical people. We can develop a special interest in nearly anything. Some of us learn to speak fluent Klingon; others memorize algorithms for solving Rubik’s cubes. My sister’s brain is a compendium of movie trivia and dialogue. My own special interests have included everything from bat biology to the history of the Tudor dynasty, to personal finance, to subreddits run by so-called men’s rights activists.

Agent Shelan wondered if it would really hurt diplomatic relations with the Klingon Empire all that much if she tossed Korath, Son of Monak, into an antimatter reactor. Surely if anyone would recognize homicide as a valid response to intolerable annoyance, it would be the Klingons.

The way people think about language is influenced by the times they live in, and it is possible to show how changing times led, in a general way, to changes in the types of languages that inventors came up with. There are trends, or eras, in language invention that reflect the preoccupations of the surrounding culture, and so, in a way, the history of invented languages is a story about the way we think about languages.

Seventeenth-century philosophers and scientists were complaining that language obscured thinking, that words got in the way of understanding things. They believed that concepts were clear and universal, but language was ambiguous and unsystematic.

Sometimes we do find the words to express an idea, and only then realize what a stupid idea it is. This experience would suggest that our thoughts are not as clean and beautiful as we would like to believe.

Esperanto is a ‘linguistic handshake,’ a neutral ground where people of different nations can communicate as equals.” Nice idea, but people don’t speak languages for abstract reasons. The Irish feel a strong emotional attachment to the once-persecuted language of their heritage, but despite mandatory school instruction, they don’t speak Irish.

As revolutions broke out and tensions increased, language inventors found not only a new strategy for building the structures of their languages but a new reason for building them in the first place.

Douglas just looked at me blankly because I wasn’t speaking in JavaScript or Klingon or whatever it is he understands best.

The Klingon snarled something that sounded horribly like Christy’s pissed-off texts and everyone shut up. “First Spiner’s Q and A, then Nimoy’s tribute while Data gets his kicks with the Orion woman. Then signed pictures for Brett and D4C. We all convene at the panel about the ethics of the temporal prime directive. Q is making an appearance and revealing their agenda. Agreed?” All nodded. Christy opened her mouth, but closed it again, shaking her head. Good, because no amount of translation was going to suffice.

All aspects of honor derive from honesty. A liar cannot truly be honorable, for where is the honor in deception?

Honor is served only by combat that elevates the spirit. Correct choices—of whom we fight, and why, and how we live—are paving stones. Taken together, they can make a road we travel to reach honor.

America’s short-lived experiment with language planning is so obscure to modern memory that while the Klingon language has a 3,000-word entry on Wikipedia, as of this writing, the American Academy of Language and Belles Lettres has no entry at all.

He hadn’t really struck me as a sci-fi nerd, but then, I suppose you can’t really pick them out in a crowd, unless you’re at a sci-fi convention and they’re dressed like Klingons or something.