Top 250 Quotes & Sayings by William Shatner - Page 4

What part of me was born with the courage to stand in front of strangers and risk rejection?

You can't do anything about the past. And you don't know what the future is.

Within weeks of our premiere, it became obvious that Leonard [Nimoy] and the character of Spock were becoming something of a national phenomenon. ... And to be unflatteringly frank, it bugged me. ... [Then, Gene Roddenberry] said to me the wisest thing he could possibly have uttered. He said, `Don't ever fear having good and popular people around you, because they can only enhance your own performance. The more you can play to these people, the better the show.'

What have I done? I've blundered my way through life. So I have my picture on the wall. The minute I die, that picture will start to yellow and fade and eventually be gone. Blown in the wind and become part of the molecular structure of something else. These things we see as "success," they're non-accomplishments.

A pretty girl is certainly comparable to a good horse.

I have had mystical experiences with horses. I felt they were communicating with me in horse communication.

Everyone knows everything about all of us. That's too much knowledge!

The truth can't be hidden for long.

Pain and guilt can't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!

I'm interested in man's march into the unknown but to vomit in space is not my idea of a good time. Neither is a fiery crash with the vomit hovering over me.

I'm coming little animal!.

Oh, for God's sake... get a life, will you?

People have an affinity towards things, and you don't know where it comes from. Mozart wrote a symphony when he was four, so it's said; the theory is maybe because his father was a conductor, it happened in vitro, and he heard the music before he was born, and by the age of four he knew how to write music.

I guess the disc jockey thought I was trying to sing or something so ... they had fun with it. But the reality was that it was something, there was a concept behind it.

A true pilot must of necessity pay attention to the seasons, the heavens, the stars, the winds, and everything proper to the craft if he is really to rule a ship.

I'm not going to have a tombstone. I'm going to be tossed in the air. Ashes, tossed like a salad.

I existed before Star Trek. I started in live television. I was there when the cameras were as big as a table, had internal fans that were whirring and tubes that, because of the heat, had to come right up to our face for a close-up. Now, we are talking about green screen and putting us in locations that we'll never visit. What has happened to us is a miracle, and the miracle is our inventiveness. The tragedy of our lives is also our inventiveness.

So bitcoin is cyber snob currency.

The idea of being a professional actor never occurred to anybody, including myself, for a long time.

The more powerful the villain is the more powerful the hero.

Your cadence is your music.

And that works for me. So that if this is it, you better take it at its right proportion. That there are serious things, but most things are temporal and ephemeral, and you should cultivate that attitude. That joy and love and all the verities are what counts. So I try not to take too many things seriously, and if I find myself caught up in the seriousness of the moment, within a period of time, I'm able to cajole myself out of it.

Has it ever occurred to you that how we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life?

Stop and smell the garlic! That's all you have to do.

I've never been without a dog. I've made trips across the country with a dog. I've been in that angst of loneliness, where you're really alone in the universe, except for the dog.

Memories were the markers of the journey through life. It was necessary to know where you had come from. Only then could you know where you were going.

Let women figure out why they won't sleep with you. Don't do their work for them.

Never buy anything that eats while you sleep.

What does God need with a starship?

Is there a God? There is, but we don't know where. Or who. And, indeed, why.

Mythology needs heroes and it needs villains, it needs heroes to fail, it needs heroes to struggle.

I've discovered that the more freedom I have to be creative, the more creative I become.

Christmas is fun anyway. It's a myth organized over the years and gained different mythological qualities as the years go by.

I love technology. Matches, to light a fire is really high tech. The wheel is REALLY one of the great inventions of all time. Other than that I am an ignoramus about technology. I once looked for the 'ON' button on the computer and came to find out it was on the back. Then I thought, anyone who would put the 'on' switch on the back, where you can't find it, doesn't do any good for my psyche. The one time I did get the computer on, I couldn't turn the damn thing off!

I always thought that the spine of a character was awe and wonder.

I don't Twitter. I can't even remember my password name. I have problems with electronics, so what I've done is hire a young man out of college, whose very fingers are the extension of computer keys, and he Twitters. He does the mechanics, but I very carefully modulate what is said and have used Twitter to publicize stuff, have conversations and instigate competition.

One of the advantages of being a captain is being able to ask for advice without necessarily having to take it.

I am curious about many things, and find the world around me, and the people and objects and things in it, equally fascinating. There is a great deal of that awe and wonder in me.

There were many times when I kept silent about being Jewish as I got older, when Jewish jokes were told.

I got on a horse when I was about 12 years of age, and started galloping around. my mother came up said "where did you learn to ride a horse?" I said "this is the first time I've ever been on a horse" I just knew, I just felt the horse.

Divorce is simply modern society's version of medieval torture. Except it lasts longer and leaves deeper scars. A divorce releases the most primitive emotions; the ugliest, raw feelings. Emotionally wounded people do their best to inflict pain upon the other party, but rather than using claws they use divorce lawyers.

You have to continuously fail. You fail at something, then you get over it, then you fail some more. And after you fail, there's always something new there. And that something new can be really interesting.

The pictures remind you of something that can never be recaptured, the time is gone, the only thing you know is the present. That's all that's knowable and even the present isn't knowable. The present becomes the past... so you really don't know anything.

I want to discover a truth for myself that is really true. Whether it's a piece of scientific knowledge, or a philosophical truth.

Conquest is easy. Control is not.

It's easy to say no, I'm not going to do that. I'm not leaving the house.

A sense of the unknown has always lured mankind and the greatest of the unknowns of today is outer space. The terrors, the joys and the sense of accomplishment are epitomized in the space program.

I think you die the way you live.

I love cameras but I find myself reluctantly taking pictures because what's past is past.

It's I who have to talk fast. It's you who have to think fast.

I did some professional radio acting as a teenager, and I essentially put myself through college with radio acting in Montreal. When I graduated, I got jobs in professional theatres, repertory, and stock theatres in Canada for a couple of years. And then I went to Stratford, Ontario, where I spent three years with a Shakespeare company. We took a classical play from Stratford to New York City, and I got some good notices there and essentially stayed and did live television. And that brings you to the beginning of filming.

My life is my statement and I try to be true to myself and thusly to other people. Whatever my failings are, they are human and I try to perfect it each day.

Is this year over yet? Too many people are passing away. Rest In Peace, George Michael.

I love the musicality of words.

My boy, that was a TV show. I used a stunt double. I always use a stunt double. Except in love scenes. I insist on doing those myself.

Careers are here and they're gone. No matter how great we think we are, we're nothing but the temples of Ozymandias-we're ruins in the making.

Heroes, classical heroes have the look of eagles, too. They're looking beyond the immediate problem and into the future.

If there's anything I'm not pompous about, it's myself or my work. But I seem to be able to play it.

I've been in a multimedia extravaganza for 50 years and it's gone by so quickly that it's unimaginable. And it's also a major part of my life that has gone by.

We're all embers from the same fire. Our ember winks out, we're ashes, we go back to the fire. I like that image. There has to be a unifying theory. I think there is a continuity of some kind, that my love for my wife will go on past the death of my body. Nature is perfect.