Top 100 William Shatner Quotes
#2. It was the early 1970s and I was recently divorced. I had three kids and was totally broke. I managed to find work back east on the straw-hat circuit - summer stock - but couldn't afford hotels, so I lived out of the back of my truck, under a hard shell.
William Shatner
#3. When I did the film Generations, in which the character died, I felt like a guest for the first time. That made me very sad.
William Shatner
#5. I love to go to a movie, get a Diet Coke and a barrel of popcorn, and sit there with my kids and watch a film.
William Shatner
#6. We meet aliens every day who have something to give us. They come in the form of people with different opinions.
William Shatner
#8. I'm not going to have a tombstone. I'm going to be tossed in the air. Ashes, tossed like a salad.
William Shatner
#9. I had been in a Shakespeare company for three years and done a lot of Shakespeare. That was fun. That was interesting.
William Shatner
#12. Somewhere in university, I realized that I hadn't been to classes in months, and I'd get tired to the point of narcolepsy doing anything other than some form of performing, directing, writing, or acting.
William Shatner
#13. I find age such a foreign concept. I have to be reminded. I still have the extraordinary feeling of adventure, striking out into unknown fields.
William Shatner
#14. If there's anything I'm not pompous about, it's myself or my work. But I seem to be able to play it.
William Shatner
#16. Things people say strike me as amusing, and I am prone to saying out loud what everybody's thinking.
William Shatner
#17. It's irksome to read about someone I don't recognize. It frightens me.
William Shatner
#18. I'm gonna reveal something to you that's going to come as a shock: If you're a stupid young man, you're usually a stupid old man. Most people, including myself, keep repeating the same mistakes.
William Shatner
#19. Being an icon is overrated, remember an icon can be moved by a mouse
William Shatner
#20. I'm not technically adept at music, but I'd love to be part of a discussion of where progressive rock ends and country music begins.
William Shatner
#22. I'm always open to the possibility that somebody's got a better idea than I have. It happens with some frequency.
William Shatner
#23. You have to create your life. You have to carve it, like a sculpture.
William Shatner
#24. I've never been without a dog. I've made trips across the country with a dog.
William Shatner
#25. I am curious about many things, and find the world around me, and the people and objects and things in it, equally fascinating. There is a great deal of that awe and wonder in me.
William Shatner
#29. The conundrum of free will and destiny has always kept me dangling.
William Shatner
#31. I enjoyed reading all the classic authors like Isaac Asimov and Bradbury.
William Shatner
#32. My kids say if there's any family dinner that doesn't result in somebody crying, it's not a good dinner. They cry because it helps relieve them of a guilt or some onerous emotional burden. It's like a family tradition.
William Shatner
#34. The essence of paint ball is the fact that when you get hit by a ball full of paint, it hurts just enough to say, 'Ow, I gotta get out of the way,' but not enough to say, 'I quit.'
William Shatner
#35. I envy the people who say, 'oh, well, I've got my name in the golden book and I'm going to be entered into the pearly gates.'
William Shatner
#36. No matter how prosaic something is that you've done and been a part of again and again, there is so much more there that you haven't seen.
William Shatner
#37. I'm a performer, comedian, entertainer, writer and director.
William Shatner
#39. A sense of the unknown has always lured mankind and the greatest of the unknowns of today is outer space. The terrors, the joys and the sense of accomplishment are epitomized in the space program.
William Shatner
#40. I want to discover a truth for myself that is really true. Whether it's a piece of scientific knowledge, or a philosophical truth.
William Shatner
#42. In entertainment, whether it's movies or television or whatever, I'm a great audience, but I don't remember the names of the people I've seen or the groups that I've heard.
William Shatner
#43. If you read my books, especially the Star Trek books and the Quest for Tomorrow books, you'll see in them the core theme of the basic humanistic questions that Star Trek asked.
William Shatner
#44. I sometimes find that in interviews you learn more about yourself than the person learned about you.
William Shatner
#46. There was nothing lonelier than a man with a million friends.
William Shatner
#47. My understanding is, the fans are so ravenous in Canada, they gnaw on the stars.
William Shatner
#48. I had a major in business, and I graduated with a business degree, but I was perhaps the worst student to graduate from that program.
William Shatner
#49. 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 responsibility.
William Shatner
#51. What part of me was born with the courage to stand in front of strangers and risk rejection?
William Shatner
#52. She's still your mother." Meaning no matter what she's done, how much you don't understand her, you will treat her with respect. She's still your mother.
William Shatner
#53. A pretty girl is certainly comparable to a good horse.
William Shatner
#54. I don't want people to know me. I want them to believe my version.
William Shatner
#55. I know very little about the viral, electronic world, but I use Twitter to communicate not only information that I think some of the fans want to hear about but also ideas.
William Shatner
#56. When I'm interviewing somebody I don't work from prepared questions.
William Shatner
#58. Don't be afraid to make an ass of yourself. I do it all the time, and look what I got. (Spoken at a graduation ceremony while holding aloft an honorary doctoral degree from McGill University)
William Shatner
#59. My life is my statement and I try to be true to myself and thusly to other people. Whatever my failings are, they are human and I try to perfect it each day.
William Shatner
#60. Nobody could have imagined the phenomenon that 'Star Trek' became. It's still almost impossible to imagine.
William Shatner
#61. Marriage is a reflection of your life in general: how you treat people, how you argue, how secure you are in your own thoughts. How vehemently do you argue your point of view? With what disdain do you view the other's point of view?
William Shatner
#63. I didn't realize that, in doing a documentary, there is this process of discovery. It's not like a film or a play with a set script. It sort of reveals itself.
William Shatner
#64. A true pilot must of necessity pay attention to the seasons, the heavens, the stars, the winds, and everything proper to the craft if he is really to rule a ship.
William Shatner
#65. When you've done the technical part, you're then into the joy, the zen, into being. Technology no longer exists for you. You're then into the mystery of the thing you're doing.
William Shatner
#67. Don't waste your time trying to get into my head. There's nothing there.
William Shatner
#68. The possibilities that are suggested in quantum physics tell us that everything that we're looking at may not be in fact there, so the underlying nature of being is weird.
William Shatner
#70. Don't be afraid of making an ass of yourself. I do it all the time and look what I got.
William Shatner
#71. I think the acting satisfies the need and desire for approval.
William Shatner
#72. A tree you pass by every day is just a tree. If you are to closely examine what a tree has and the life a tree has, even the smallest thing can withstand a curiosity, and you can examine whole worlds.
William Shatner
#73. And I enjoyed the celebrity and the creativity that was involved in Star Trek.
William Shatner
#74. I've never not appeared in front of a live audience for any longer period than a month or two.
William Shatner
#75. I've been in that angst of loneliness, where you're really alone in the universe, except for the dog.
William Shatner
#76. I don't know how I got to this point but it must be as a result of everything that has come before so if I were to change something, I might not be at this point now.
William Shatner
#77. Although I'm a business major out of McGill University, I know nothing ... but then I found out much later in life, nobody knows anything.
William Shatner
#79. If I'm given an opportunity to do something, I do it. Or else I fool around with it.
William Shatner
#81. Voice acting is very interesting, I've done several animated projects, and you have to make the voice reflect the character and try and do as much with a word as you can with a look in a live-action film.
William Shatner
#83. The actor is in the hands of a lot of other people, over which he has no control.
William Shatner
#84. We were basically one and the same, although Jim [Kirk] was just about perfect, and, of course, I am perfect.
William Shatner
#85. I always thought that the spine of a character was awe and wonder.
William Shatner
#86. If we can clean up our world, I'll bet you we can achieve warp drive.
William Shatner
#87. We're all embers from the same fire. Our ember winks out, we're ashes, we go back to the fire.
William Shatner
#88. Why does the lizard stick his tongue out? The lizard sticks its tongue out because that's the way its listening and looking and tasting its environment. It's its means of appreciating what's in front of it.
William Shatner
#89. When I was out for the Christmas Holidays in school, I would go skiing up to the mountains and there they had Santa on a sled. Pulled by horses and other reindeer, it was a very, very picturesque time and that struck me very emphatically then and has remained with me all this time.
William Shatner
#90. You know, the process of making a documentary is one of discovery, and like writing a story, you follow a lead and that leads you to something else and then by the time you finish, the story is nothing like you expected.
William Shatner
#91. One of the advantages of being a captain is being able to ask for advice without necessarily having to take it.
William Shatner
#93. Avatar is a watershed movie. We'll always refer to Lawrence of Arabia in the same way. We'll always look at Avatar and say, "That's about as good as it gets." It's an enormous advance, in every way, shape and form, of movie making.
William Shatner
#95. Spencer Tracy was a man who did very much what I do on a set, and that is, he comes down and he does his job, and then he goes back to his dressing room.
William Shatner
#96. When I direct and have to look at filmed scenes of myself, I suck.
William Shatner
#98. Regret is the worst human emotion. If you took another road, you might have fallen off a cliff. I'm content.
William Shatner
#100. I love technology. Matches, to light a fire, is really high tech. The wheel is really one of the great inventions of all time. Other than that, I am an ignoramus about technology.
William Shatner
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