Star Trek Discovery Quotes

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.

They’re cloaking,” I said, as the pieces clicked into place. “They’re using Iron glamour to twist the light around themselves so they appear invisible.” I felt a thrill of discovery, of knowing I was right. All those years of watching Star Trek had finally paid off.

Was that what Starfleet was, when it came down to it? One massive high-school science club? Why had no one ever mentioned this before?

But until today, I’d thought I was Sarek’s greatest disappointment.” “Unlikely,” Spock said. “I am quite certain he has reserved that distinction for me.

It’s always going to be like this, isn’t it? she thought frantically. Whatever I want to do, it’ll never be what Mom wants. And eventually, I’ll start to forget what I wanted, and it’ll be like I was never there at all.

Sylvia had found in the past that when she started to get close to people her own age, when she started to relax and speak her mind, they tended to drift away from her.

You would elevate tradition and societal approval over the expansion of knowledge. If anything deserves to be called ‘illogical,’ it is that.

Pick up your feet, Mister Saru,” Burnham said as she and Gant headed to the turbolift. “Time, tide, and transporters wait for no one.

He raised his right hand to her in the classic Vulcan salute. “Live long and prosper, Michael Burnham.” She returned the salute and felt for a moment as if she had found the brother she had never known she had always wanted. “Peace and long life, Spock.

People have always wanted answers to the big questions. Where did we come from? How did the universe begin? What is the meaning and design behind it all? Is there anyone out there? The creation accounts of the past now seem less relevant and credible. They have been replaced by a variety of what can only be called superstitions, ranging from New Age to Star Trek. But real science can be far stranger than science fiction, and much more satisfying. I am a scientist. And a scientist with a deep fascination with physics, cosmology, the universe and the future of humanity. I was brought up by my parents to have an unwavering curiosity and, like my father, to research and try to answer the many questions that science asks us. I have spent my life travelling across the universe, inside my mind. Through theoretical physics, I have sought to answer some of the great questions. At one point, I thought I would see the end of physics as we know it, but now I think the wonder of discovery will continue long after I am gone. We are close to some of these answers, but we are not there yet.

Time seemed to slow as Chandra made a gut-twisting turn coupled with acceleration and a barrel roll, and guided the shuttle through a ragged gap in the rig’s broken superstructure, like a fragile thread passing through a needle made of death.

entropy

Bad enough to damage a world out of ignorance. But to do it willfully, in spite of knowing the truth . . . that’s a breed of selfishness I just can’t understand.

It took Saru a moment to realize he had been insulted twice in a matter of seconds. He clenched his fists and trembled like some overly anxious breed of small dog.

full disclosure, Mister Spock. Who is the Shenzhou’s XO to you?” “Her name is Michael Burnham,” Spock said. “She is . . . a friend of my family.” Pike was confused. “How well do you know her?” “She is a few years older than I am, so we rarely moved in the same social or academic circles. If not for her connection to my parents, I would barely know of her at all.” Having more facts had not made the matter any clearer to Pike. “Never mind the trip down memory lane, then.

the only things he had ever given her that she hadn’t discarded in their divorce, both retained in the name of sentimentality.

All my life, the conflict inside me has been between logic and emotion. And now, it's my emotions that are fighting. I think about him and I want to cry. But I have to smile, and I feel angry, but I want to love, and I'm hurt, but there is hope. What is this?

There was a beauty to quiet collective activity that she would never take for granted.

I have lived a life of dread and I have learned that it cannot be dispelled if you are alone. Unity brings light. And light pushes back the dark.

This is a central theme in literature and movies; from Wagon Train to Star Trek, Americans admire this desire to boldly go and then bravely defend themselves from those who resent discovery.

Unlike some of his peers in Starfleet, Saru enjoyed the sensation of being beamed. As he stood on the platform in front of the energizer array in the Shenzhou’s transporter room, the pressure of the annular confinement beam had a calming effect upon his oft-frazzled nerves.

Unlike many other types of starship in the fleet, Constitution-class vessels had no ready rooms for their captains. Most days, Pike didn’t miss having a ready room—except for those occasions when he received a classified transmission

She tapped her wrist, an ancient Terran gesture meant to signal impatience, one of the few things she remembered from early childhood on Earth.

Spock split his attention between Burnham and the path ahead. “I doubt either of us would be welcomed among Vulcan crews. As quick as they are to profess the wisdom of IDIC, they remain in many ways quite provincial.” It pained Burnham to admit to herself that Spock was likely correct. IDIC—the Vulcan philosophy that extolled the virtue of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations—all too often was honored in its breach rather than its observance. If someone as famous as Spock, son of Sarek, thinks he’d be persona non grata on an all-Vulcan ship, what chance will I ever have? She rebelled against a swell of desperation

She reminded him of the small team of Starfleet officers who had rescued him from certain death on his homeworld many years earlier. They, too, had given off the vibe of “evolved beings,” a quality of their essential nature that had made them fascinating to him: sentient creatures who possessed the attributes of an apex predator, but also the empathy and compassion of a fellow prey animal.

Apart from live performance, vinyl analog recordings were Georgiou’s favorite way to enjoy music. Rich, warm, and so eerily present—that was the enduring appeal of analog media, the bizarre magic that gave them such cachet

I-Chaya is dying. Burnham has just returned with a healer from a nearby village. The healer has examined I-Chaya and made his prognosis. All his medicine can do now is prolong I-Chaya’s suffering. It would be unseemly for Burnham to cry. She is Vulcan. “Release him,” she tells the healer. “It is fitting he dies with peace and dignity.” As the healer prepares his hypospray, Burnham’s adult cousin Selek watches while she whispers her farewell to I-Chaya, with her thanks for his courage, his loyalty, and his sacrifice.

You seem . . . I don’t know. Older? No—calmer than you did before.” She tilted her head as she continued to study him and collect her thoughts. “You present yourself in a way that feels more centered. Better balanced.” Her smile broadened to a grin. “You have gravitas now.

I know—I know more than anyone—how deeply we are all connected—across time, across space, in ways that we can’t yet comprehend!

Regret, by definition, always comes too late.

You'd think that being on planes 150 days a year would free up lots of time for writing, but instead it freed up time for listening to Reinhold Niebuhr audiobooks, watching leftist YouTube videos, and going through every single episode of Star Trek, from the original series through Discovery.

The first thing that every Kelpien learned was that the essential nature of life and the universe is impermanence: everything changes, and everything ends. Trying to resist that truth is the root of all suffering

Tomorrow Was Yesterday” dealt with the discovery by the Enterprise of a giant “universe” or “generation” ship—that is, a slower-than-light spaceship that would take generations to reach its destination because they lacked the power to traverse the vast distances between the stars any faster. The Voyager was a colony ship that had been launched from Earth hundreds of years previously, but only now were Federation ships catching up to it, the Enterprise being the first. Unfortunately, after hundreds of years, the people inside had forgotten that they were aboard a spaceship—instead they believed their enclosed world to be the totality of existence. Part of the reason for this stemmed from a mutiny in their long forgotten past, a mutiny that had left the Voyager’s population divided into two armed camps. The elite were descendants of the well educated, and they had a high standard of living in their part of the ship. The downtrodden oppressed were descendants of the mutineers. Now, the Voyager was a giant sphere, or cylinder. Artificial gravity was provided by spinning the ship to create centrifugal force; therefore, from a shipside point of view, down was outward, up was toward the center. The upper levels in the center of the ship were where the control room was located

Understood. If I have to, I’ll go up its afterburner with an electron microscope.” “Thank you, Commander. I’m sure that mental image won’t haunt me for days to come. Bridge out.

An ‘appeal to authority’ is a form of logical fallacy,

That’s why each of you wears a uniform. It’s more than just a piece of clothing. It has to be earned. To wear it is to tell the universe that you are part of something greater than yourself. The reason we all wear the same uniform is to remind us that we’ve all sworn to put aside our egos—our wants, our needs, our personal beliefs—and faithfully carry out all lawful orders given to us, no matter how terrible they might be. That is the burden we all vowed to accept.

Compassion is not weakness. Enduring is not living. And belligerence is not strength.

Other kids—blind date with someone’s brother. Me? A blind date with a wrench.

Sometimes there is no good choice, only what you can live with.

it’s one thing to accept the fragility of a single life, or even a handful of lives. It’s something else to think about losing a whole planet.