George Takei (born Hosato Takei April 20, 1937) is an American actor, author, and activist known for his role as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise in the Star Trek franchise.
Takei was born to Japanese American parents, with whom he lived in U.S.-run concentration camps during World War II. He began pursuing acting in college, which led in 1965 to the role of Sulu, to which he returned periodically into the 1990s. Upon coming out as gay in 2005, he became a prominent proponent of LGBT rights and active in state and local politics. He has been a vocal advocate of the rights of immigrants, in part through his work on the 2012 Broadway show Allegiance, about the internment experience. Although Takei was born and raised in California, he spoke both English and Japanese growing up and remains fluent in both languages. He has won several awards and accolades for his work on human rights and Japan–United States relations, including his work with the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, California.
George Takei Quotes
1. “We should indeed keep calm in the face of difference, and live our lives in a state of inclusion and wonder at the diversity of humanity.”
— George Takei
2. “If you have to make laws to hurt a group of people just to prove your morals and faith, then you have no true morals or faith to prove.”
— George Takei
3. “The only thing worse than human ignorance is human pride in that ignorance.”
— George Takei
4. “STAR TREK is a show that had a vision about a future that was positive.”
— George Takei
5. “Social media is like ancient Egypt: writing things on walls and worshiping cats.”
— George Takei
6. “People forget that stereotypes aren’t bad because they are always untrue. Stereotypes are bad because they are not always true. If we allow ourselves to judge another based on a stereotype, we have allowed a gross generalization to replace our own thinking.”
— George Takei
7. “I spent my boyhood behind the barbed wire fences of American internment camps and that part of my life is something that I wanted to share with more people.”
— George Takei
8. “Nothing is what it seems on the surface of Heroes.”
— George Takei
9. “The wheel of democracy turns slowly.”
— George Takei
10. “The starship Enterprise was a metaphor for starship Earth, and the vision was that the strength of this starship lay in its diversity.”
— George Takei
11. “Our democracy is a people’s democracy, and it can be as great as people can be, but it is also as fallible as people are.”
— George Takei
12. “Years later, the trauma of those experiences continued to haunt me. Most Japanese Americans from my parents’ generation didn’t like to talk about the internment with their children. As with many traumatic experiences, they were anguished by their memories and haunted by shame for something that wasn’t their fault. Shame is a cruel thing. It should rest on the perpetrators but they don’t carry it the way the victims do.”
— George Takei
13. “People can do great things, George. They can come up with noble, shining ideals. But people are also fallible human beings, and we know they made a terrible mistake. – Takekuma Norman Takei.”
— George Takei
14. “Well, the whole history of Star Trek is the market demand.”
— George Takei
15. “But when we came out of camp, that’s when I first realized that being in camp, that being Japanese-American, was something shameful.”
— George Takei
16. “Shame is a cruel thing. It should rest on the perpetrators but they don’t carry it the way the victims do.”
— George Takei
17. “That remains part of the problem – that we don’t know the unpleasant aspects of American history… and therefore we don’t learn the lesson those chapters have to teach us. So we repeat them over and over again.”
— George Takei
18. “Our Democracy is a Participatory Democracy. Existentially it’s dependent on people who cherish the shining, highest ideals of our Democracy and actively engage in the political process.”
— George Takei
19. “Each of us bears a responsibility to reject hate, whatever its form, whatever its justification.”
— George Takei
20. “It’s really hard to hate someone for being different when you’re too busy laughing together.”
— George Takei
21. “Yes, I remember the barbed wire and the guard towers and the machine guns, but they became part of my normal landscape. What would be abnormal in normal times became my normality in camp.”
— George Takei
22. “I have two passions in my life. One is to raise the awareness of the internment of Japanese-American citizens. My other passion is the theater.”
— George Takei
23. “As with many traumatic experiences, they were anguished by their memories and haunted by shame for something that wasn’t their fault. Shame is a cruel thing. It should rest on the perpetrators but they don’t carry it the way victims do.”
— George Takei
24. “I’m an anglophile. I visit England regularly, sometimes three or four times a year, at least once a year.”
— George Takei
25. “Pioneering is never done in front of cheerleaders urging on a roaring grandstand of popular approval.”
— George Takei
26. “There is more story in a minor character like Boba Fett than there is in all the clutter of various vampires in the Twilight franchise.”
— George Takei
27. “A man who layeth with another man must be stoned.”
— George Takei
28. “Unfriending me when I didn’t even know we were friends? It’s like breaking wind when you’re home alone. If I can’t smell you, knock yourself out.”
— George Takei
29. “As the old saying goes, I was simply looking for fan love, in Alderaan places.”
— George Takei
30. “This is supposed to be a participatory democracy and if we’re not in there participating then the people that will manipulate and exploit the system will step in there.”
— George Takei
