Quotes from George Takei

I've learned that when you get to be a certain age, you can get away with saying a lot of things, some of which wouldn't even be remotely funny if someone forty years younger said them. The Golden Girls ran for years off the same theory and basically used the same four jokes for seven marvelous seasons.

Science fiction is more than just our collective dreams for a human race that reaches to the stars. In many ways, the dreams of yesterday are becoming the realities of today and the path for tomorrow.

More importantly, the tweet was funny. Come on, it's funny.

In fact, I've heard that on the Death Star there are over 100 Starbucks franchises, sometimes one just on the other side of a blast door from another. May the froth be with you:

If leadership requires a fired-up sense of purpose and imagination, it also demands a profound connection to the society to be led.

As a matter of fact, life starts to feel mighty long when all you eat is turkey bacon and egg whites and a side of arugula.

As my father once explained to me, our "rights" are only as strong as the democracy that protects them. Because we are a people's democracy here in America, as great as the people of this country can be, but also as fallible, we must stay ever vigilant in the face of any "tyranny" of the majority, no matter the stated objective.

I began to wonder, what accounts for our collective affinity for the apocalypse? What is it about "the end" that makes it always seem just around the corner? And why do lawns in post-apocalyptic always appear freshly mowed if there's no one around to do it but the zombies?

Sharing is an act of trust, for ridicule is an ever-present risk on the Internet today.

Turkey bacon. It's like saying "shoot" instead of "shit." It just doesn't quite carry the moment.

and yes, the rich are never crazy, they're eccentric),

I imagine sarcasm to be a backward slanting font, each word leaning away from rather than into the next. These days it is getting harder and harder to tell reality from distortion, truth from satire, especially on the Internet.

I've recently suggested that Betty and I should do a TV series about two seniors living together in an unlikely pairing of a widow and a naughty gay best buddy. We could call it Friends with Government Benefits.

People are interested not just in Sulu, but George Takei - and he's gay. Life is full of twist and turns.

I think Donald Trump's interpretation of marriage is something that he himself doesn't really believe in. 'Traditional marriage' is where two people love each other, commit to each other, care for each other over the years. It is a meaningful ceremony, and his interpretation of that is not recognizing what real marriage is.

I'd like to think that, when I explain it, that Mr. Trump will understand marriage is defined by two people who love each other, commit to each other, and will care for each other through thick and thin.

Those Tea Party people are crazy. I mean, they're lunatics. They close down the government, throw people out of their jobs - hundreds of thousands of people - and they say that they're doing it ultimately in the interest of creating jobs.

Well, it gives, certainly to my father, who is the one that suffered the most in our family, and understanding of how the ideals of a country are only as good as the people who give it flesh and blood.

I was doing a civil rights musical here in Los Angeles, and we sang at one of the rallies where Dr. Martin Luther King spoke, and I remember the thrill I felt when we were introduced to him. To have him shake your hand was an absolutely unforgettable experience.

Back in the day, coming out was something very personal. You began by acknowledging the truth, first to yourself, then to close family and friends. Those of us more in the public spotlight, though, also had to 'come out' to the press.

When billionaires can give $50 million, $500 million to a campaign, and there's no limit, then it makes a mockery of 'one man, one vote.'

There's no point living at my age with many ingrained great fears.

We were American citizens. We were incarcerated by our American government in American internment camps here in the United States. The term 'Japanese internment camp' is both grammatically and factually incorrect.

When I was going to gay bars in my 20s and 30s, the older guys there explained to me that the police would occasionally raid these places and march the clients out, load them onto paddy wagons, drive them down to the station, photograph them, fingerprint them and put their names on a list. They were doing nothing wrong, and it was criminalized.