Gene Roddenberry
Gene Roddenberry
Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberrywas an American television screenwriter and producer. He is best remembered for creating the original Star Trek television series. Born in El Paso, Texas, Roddenberry grew up in Los Angeles, where his father worked as a police officer. Roddenberry flew eighty-nine combat missions in the Army Air Forces during World War II, and worked as a commercial pilot after the war. Later he followed in his father's footsteps and joined the Los Angeles Police Department where he...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 August 1921
CityEl Paso, TX
CountryUnited States of America
I have always been reasonably leery of religion because there are so many edicts in religion, 'thou shalt not,' or 'thou shalt.' I wanted my world of the future to be clear of that.
You can't take this speck of dust in this midst of all this incredible panorama of birth and complexifying and say...this is the only place that [life] happens. It's like turning your back on the whole idea of growth and evolution.
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.
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!
PICARD: There is no greater challenge than the study of philosophy. WESLEY: But William James won't be in my Starfleet exams. PICARD: The important things never will be. Anyone can be trained in the mechanics of piloting a starship. WESLEY: But Starfleet Academy PICARD: It takes more. Open your mind to the past. Art, history, philosophy. And all this may mean something.
Matter of internal security - the age-old cry of the oppressor. Picard
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.
Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all.
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.
Time is the fire in which we burn.
The glory of creation is in its infinite diversity.
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.
Art is really people asking the eternal question, "What is it all about?"
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.