Jeffrey Sinclair quotes from Babylon 5

Jeffrey Sinclair

The best way to understand someone is to fight him, make him angry. That's when you see the real person.

Sinclair

You forgot the first rule of the fanatic: when you become obsessed with the enemy, you become the enemy!

Jeffrey Sinclair

Everyone lies, Michael. The innocent lie because they don't want to be blamed for something they didn't do, and the guilty lie because they don't have any other choice.

Sinclair

Sometimes doing the right thing doesn't change anything.

Jeffrey Sinclair

You should never hand someone a gun unless you're sure where they'll point it.

Sinclair

Nothing's the same anymore.

Jeffrey Sinclair

There's a great darkness coming, Michael.

Jeffrey Sinclair

It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the Earth/Minbari war. The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last best hope for peace. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5.

They are alone. They are a dying people. We should let them pass.

Sinclair

The Narn or the Centauri?

Yes.

Sinclair

We've had plenty of experience with sneak attacks - Pearl Harbor, the terrorist nuking of San Diego, the destruction of our first Mars colony, it's a long and bloody history... Do you know what we learned from it? That the sneak attack is the first resort of a coward.

G'Kar

Just a minute-

Sinclair

You didn't even have the decency to pick a military target! A poorly armed civilian colony... [in sarcasm] What a challenge that must've been for the great Narn military...

Franklin

So, I hear you saw something.

Jeffrey Sinclair

Yes...something.

Franklin

Well, uh, you think you can be a little more specific?

Sinclair

I'm not sure. I don't know if I'll ever be sure.

Franklin

Well, I still don't believe it. And I'd be careful if I were you, Commander. That sort of talk will get you sent off on a very long vacation.

If I may ask, what happened to my brother's collection?

Sinclair

[with a sly smile] Life's full of mysteries. Consider this one of them.

Jeffrey Sinclair

The last time I gave an interview, they told me to just relax and say what I really felt. Ten minutes after the broadcast I got transferred to an outpost so far off the star maps you couldn't find it with a hunting dog and a Ouija board.

Michael Garibaldi

[smiling] Don't sweat it. Just be that charming, effervescent Commander we've all come to know and love. What's the worst that could happen? They fire you, ship you off to the Rim, and I get promoted to Commander. I don't see a problem here.

Sinclair

How sharper than a serpent's tooth.

Is it worth it? Should we just pull back? Forget the whole thing as a bad idea, and take care of our own problems, at home.

Sinclair

No. We have to stay here. And there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-Tzu, and Einstein, and Morobuto, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes...[and] all of this...all of this...was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars.

Catherine Sakai

I don't mean to alarm you, but your pants are talking to you.

Jeffrey Sinclair

I know.