Your Honor, a courtroom is a crucible. In it, we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a pure product: the truth, for all time. [points to Commander Maddox] Now sooner or later, this man, or others like him, will succeed in replicating Commander Data. Now, the decision you reach here today will determine how we will regard this creation of our genius. It will reveal the kind of people we are, what he is destined to be. It will reach far beyond this courtroom and this one android. It could significantly redefine the boundaries of personal liberty and freedom, expanding them for some, savagely curtailing them for others. Are you prepared to condemn him and all who will come after him to servitude and slavery? Your Honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. [points to Data] Well, there it sits! Waiting. You wanted a chance to make law. Well, here it is. Make a good one.
[after a long pause] It sits there looking at me, and I don't know what it is. This case has dealt with metaphysics, with questions best left to saints and philosophers. I am neither competent nor qualified to answer those. I've got to make a ruling, to try to speak to the future. Is Data a machine? Yes. Is he the property of Starfleet? No. We have all been dancing around the basic issue. Does Data have a soul? I don't know that he has. I don't know that I have. But I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself. It is the ruling of this court that Lieutenant Commander Data has the freedom to choose.
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