James T. Kirk quotes from Star Trek: The Original Series

Kirk

We're all aware of the need for salt on a hot and arid planet like this, Professor [Crater], but it's a mystery, and I don't like mysteries. They give me a bellyache and I got a beauty right now.

Kirk

You bleed too much, Crater. You're too pure and noble. Are you saving the last of its kind... or has this become Crater's private heaven here? This thing becomes wife, lover, best friend, wise man, fool, idol, slave. It isn't bad to have everyone in the universe at your beck and call. You win all the arguments.

Kirk

[to Charlie] You go slow, be gentle. It's no one-way street -- you know how you feel and that's all. It's how the girl feels too. Don't press. If the girl feels anything for you at all, you'll know.

Kirk

Love... you're better off without it, and I'm better off without mine. This vessel...I give... she takes. She won't permit me my life. I've got to live hers.

Kirk

[about Evil Kirk] I have to take him back inside myself. I can't survive without him. I don't want to take him back. He's like an animal. a thoughtless, brutal animal. And yet it's me. Me!

Kirk

We humans are full of unpredictable emotions that logic cannot solve.

Kirk

I think children have an instinctive need for adults. They want to be told right and wrong.

Kirk

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

Kirk

Captain to crew. Those of you who have served for long on this vessel have encountered alien life-forms. You know the greatest danger facing us is ourselves, an irrational fear of the unknown. But there's no such thing as the unknown-- only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood. In most cases we have found that intelligence capable of a civilization is capable of understanding peaceful gestures. Surely a life-form advanced enough for space travel is advanced enough to eventually understand our motives. All decks stand by. Captain out.

Kirk

A Vulcan can no sooner be disloyal than he can exist without breathing.

Kirk

Worlds may change, galaxies disintegrate -- but a woman is always a woman.

Kirk

[officiating at the wedding of Lieutenants Tomlinson and Martine] Since the days of the first wooden vessels, all shipmasters have had one happy privilege: that of uniting two people in the bonds of matrimony.

Kirk

The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play.

Kirk

I do [believe you]! I've met some interesting characters myself!

Kirk

Our missions are peaceful — not for conquest. When we do battle, it is only because we have no choice.