You don't know me very well, Constable, but I've been in service to the Federation—Starfleet—all my adult life. No one has ever questioned my loyalty. No one in my entire life has ever had cause to ask, “Miles O'Brien, are you a criminal?” I took an oath to defend the Federation and what it stands for. I don't steal from them. I don't lie to them. I'm no angel, but I try to live every day as the best human being I know how to be. I need my little girl to wake up in the morning and look up at me and see a man she can respect. Until now, she always could.
The way I see it, humans used to be a lot like Ferengi: greedy, acquisitive, interested only in profit. We're a constant reminder of a part of your past you'd like to forget.
But you're overlooking something. Humans used to be a lot worse than Ferengi: slavery, concentration camps, interstellar wars. We have nothing in our past that approaches that kind of barbarism. You see? We're nothing like you; we're better.
