Be brave. Be bold. Don’t wait for change. Seize your own life and make it.

Sylvia had found in the past that when she started to get close to people her own age, when she started to relax and speak her mind, they tended to drift away from her.

If I didn’t work on the assumption that people were mostly telling me the truth, I think I’d go mad... And I’d rather be mistaken about others than mistrustful of them.

Was that what Starfleet was, when it came down to it? One massive high-school science club? Why had no one ever mentioned this before?

But it was all lies! If Tret and Colat and the rest are going to be the next generation of political leaders, why tell them lies? If they don’t hear the truther, they’ll think that nothing wrong happened! Tret thinks that nothing about Cardassia is wrong! He, his friends – they’ll make the same mistakes over and over again. The Occupation will happen over and over again!

It’s always going to be like this, isn’t it? she thought frantically. Whatever I want to do, it’ll never be what Mom wants. And eventually, I’ll start to forget what I wanted, and it’ll be like I was never there at all.

The Prime Directive is a nice ideal, but have you noticed it never works in practice?

A simple, magnificent equation: ingenuity plus hope equals change.

Into the echo chamber of his own mind, where he was always able to find a justification for the most terrible actions.

A simple, magnificent equation: ingenuity plus hope equals change