Quotes by William Shatner

“If you make a fool of yourself, you can do it with dignity, without taking your pants down. And if you do take your pants down, you can still do it with dignity.”

“Over the years, I've become barraged by comments from people, such as, 'Beam me up, Scotty!' and I became defensive. I felt they were derisive and engendered an attitude. I am grateful for the succ...”

“There's a joy and a pain about directing where the dreams you have are becoming concrete but the attention to detail, the need for time is such that it's overwhelming at times, and the stream of re...”

“Given the freedom to create, everybody is creative. All of us have an innate, instinctive desire to change our environment, to put our original stamp on this world, to tell a story never told befor...”

“Jason [Alexander] says he was inspired by me. Why is everyone who's inspired by me such a fat, fucking loser? You know, I look back on this amazing evening and I can't help but think to myself, Who...”

“You know who I am?! I'm William Tiberius Shatner!”

“I'm not a Starfleet commander, or T. J. Hooker. I don't live on Starship NCC-170... [some audience members say 1], or own a phaser. I don't know anybody named Bones, Sulu, or Spock [picture of Dr. ...”

“My being Jewish does not inform the things I do, necessarily. 'Exodus' is a wonderful piece, no matter what religion you are. 'The Shiva Club,' which is a movie I am attempting to make sometime soo...”

“Divorce is simply modern society's version of medieval torture. Except it lasts longer and leaves deeper scars. A divorce releases the most primitive emotions; the ugliest, raw feelings. Emotionall...”

“You, HP, promised me a toxic-free COMPUTER by 2009. Now my friends at Greenpeace tell me that I'll have to wait till 2011. What's up with that?”

“They said I was this William Shatner character, and I figured I had to be it, pompous, takes himself seriously, hardheaded. So I played it. But I didn’t see it. That character doesn’t seem like me ...”

“Star Trek never really caught on with audiences, ran for three seasons, and was canceled. I wish I had taken notes at the time, because you people sure do have a lot of questions about it.”

“Captain Kirk was captain of everybody's fate. He was a dictator.”

“My big claim to fame during the three years I was at Stratford was understudying Henry V and going on without any rehearsal — and I tell that story in the show. ... Tyrone Guthrie, a great English ...”

“Science fiction these days is only half a step ahead of science. Astrophysicists and scientists are working in the same way as science fiction writers. They’re working things out in their imaginati...”

“A friend of mine [Leonard Nimoy] suffered from COPD. That's why I wanted to let you know about Inogen, a new way to have oxygen anytime, anywhere. Look into the difference Inogen can make for you.”

“What you have given me, is the most profound experience I could imagine. I’m so filled with emotion, about what’s just happened — it’s extraordinary. It’s extraordinary. I hope I never recover from...”

“He so often gets a bad rap for overacting, but I just don’t see that. When I lived in Brooklyn before moving to California in 1951, I used to go out of my way to watch Bill perform on TV in New Yor...”

“It’s difficult working with someone who is not a team player. The rest of the cast all understand what makes a scene work—it’s everybody contributing to it. But Bill is a wonderful actor, and he kn...”