Gene Roddenberry: The present blitz about drugs

Why are we now going into space? Well, why did we trouble to look past the next mountain? Our prime obligation to ourselves is to make the unknown known. We are on a journey to keep an appointment with whatever we are.

Gene Roddenberry

space journey past

We have within reach, now, the attainment of almost every dream of mankind.

Gene Roddenberry

attainment mankind dream

We are on a journey to keep an appointment with whatever we are.

Gene Roddenberry

star-gazing space journey

Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving.

Gene Roddenberry

believe reality moving

For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain. If people need religion, ignore them and maybe they will ignore you, and you can go on with your life. It wasn't until I was beginning to do Star Trek that the subject of religion arose. What brought it up was that people were saying that I would have a chaplain on board the Enterprise. I replied, "No, we don't.

Gene Roddenberry

stars brain people

Art is really people asking the eternal question, "What is it all about?"

Gene Roddenberry

asking people art

They say that ninety per cent of TV is junk. But ninety per cent of everything is junk.

Gene Roddenberry

junk tvs television

'Star Trek' is a 'Wagon Train' concept - built around characters who travel to worlds 'similar' to our own, and meet the action-adventure-drama which become our stories. Their transportation is the cruiser 'S.S. Yorktown,' performing a well-defined and long-range Exploration-Science-Security mission which helps create our format.

Gene Roddenberry

stars adventure drama

A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away.

Gene Roddenberry

choices men reality

They said God was on high and he controlled the world and therefore we must pray against Satan. Well, if God controls the world, he controls Satan. For me, religion was full of misstatements and reaches of logic that I just couldn't agree with.

Gene Roddenberry

logic god world

We stress humanity, and this is done at considerable cost. We can't have a lot of dramatics that other shows get away with - promiscuity, greed, jealousy. None of those have a place in 'Star Trek.'

Gene Roddenberry

greed stress stars

For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.

Gene Roddenberry

chaplains brain people

Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all.

Gene Roddenberry

false-prophets degrees atheist

It has become a crusade of mine to demonstrate that TV need not be violent to be exciting.

Gene Roddenberry

violent tvs needs

I think God is as much a basic ingredient in the universe as neutrons and positrons. This is the prime force, when we look around the universe.

Gene Roddenberry

neutrons looks thinking

In a better world, I can do anything. I'll be there in a better world. In a better world, they will not laugh at me or look down their nose at me.

Gene Roddenberry

noses laughing looks

Ancient astronauts didn't build the pyramids. Human beings built the pyramids, because they're clever and they work hard.

Gene Roddenberry

hard-work pyramids clever

There was much to put out of his mind. Why was it difficult to forget Chekov's astonished delight which greeted him at the command airlock when he boarded. And on the bridge - Kirk! The mere name made Spock groan inwardly as he remembered what it had cost him to turn away from that welcome. T'hy'la!

Gene Roddenberry

bridges names mind

I'm in a period of growth and expansion. I'm taking long, hard looks at the world and what's happening in it, analyzing and thinking. I'm trying to become acquainted with the universe - with the part of it I occupy - and trying to settle, for myself, what my relationship with it is.

Gene Roddenberry

growth long thinking

Its seems to me - it's likely that heaven's here right now. If you could take life with its pain and misery, where you fail and you sometimes win, and if you package it into a game, people would pay a fortune to have this game. And I don't know that I'd want it to be resolved so peacefully that the game would be all over.

Gene Roddenberry

pain games winning

The present blitz about drugs - I think it looks very much like how we treated insane people 100 years ago -- throw them in the cage - as if that's the whole answer. And it's not the whole answer.