George Takei
Arguments that we will never stop all shootings by restricting access to such weapons fails to account for our strong and common desire at least to stop many of them - or any of them.
You know, I grew up in two American internment camps, and at that time I was very young.
Happily, the days when overt racial discrimination and segregation were championed by social conservatives are long past.
The best way to get people to connect with an issue is to humanize it. You can do so much more powerfully with music and touch the heart.
In many ways, my decision to come out changed the course not only of my personal life but of my professional one as well.
My father told me about American democracy. And he said you have to be actively engaged in the political process to make our democracy work. So I've been doing that my entire life. Civil rights movement. The peace movement during the Vietnam conflict. The movement to get an apology and redress for Japanese-Americans.
I marched back then - I was in a civil-rights musical, Fly Blackbird, and we met Martin Luther King.
I'm an anglophile. I visit England regularly, sometimes three or four times a year, at least once a year.
My memories of camp - I was four years old to eight years old - they're fond memories.
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.
As you know, when Star Trek was canceled after the second season, it was the activism of the fans that revived it for a third season.
Well, the whole history of Star Trek is the market demand.
To do theater you need to block off a hunk of time.
And it seems to me important for a country, for a nation to certainly know about its glorious achievements but also to know where its ideals failed, in order to keep that from happening again.
Well, it gives, certainly to my father, who is the one that suffered the most in our family, and understanding of how the ideals of a country are only as good as the people who give it flesh and blood.
Plays close, movies wrap and TV series eventually get cancelled, and we were cancelled in three season.
I thought this convention phenomenon was very flattering, but that's about the extent of it.
Every time we had a hot war going on in Asia, it was difficult for Asian Americans here.
I was blessed with my career. I passionately love acting. And it's given me a good livelihood.
I love people. When you're engaged with society and trying to make it a better society, you're an optimist.
This political climate today reminds me of what my father must have gone through in 1942, when the winds of war and fires of hate were surrounding him. We have a candidate for the presidency of the United States, Donald Trump, using the same rhetoric that my father must have heard from elected officials.
When I came out, I was 68, and I was totally prepared for my career to recede when I spoke to the press for the first time. What happened after that blew me away. I started getting more offers. My career blossomed.
I had convinced my father to let me pursue this career, and I passionately wanted it. And here was this conflict in me, and I hadn't shared it with my father. And it was excruciating to always have your guard up. Particularly because, being an actor, you're public and visible. I could be seen coming out of a gay bar. Who could have seen me?
I'm George Takei, and I'm straight... up asking you to vote.
I'm especially concerned about the future of this country, because I'm concerned about the gay people of the future. We need to ensure their good life by registering to vote.
Social media affords me an opportunity to interact with fans on a daily basis, not just for a few seconds apiece at a science-fiction convention.
Back in the day, coming out was something very personal. You began by acknowledging the truth, first to yourself, then to close family and friends. Those of us more in the public spotlight, though, also had to 'come out' to the press.
They're the best critics. Workshops are good, and drama teachers are fine, but the best is the audience. And even better if they're paying!
People are interested not just in Sulu, but George Takei - and he's gay. Life is full of twist and turns.
I do find things funny. When you see life through the eyes of someone with a good sense of humor, which my grandmother did, life is a human comedy.
To characterize all Muslims as terrorists is fear-mongering of the worst kind.
I'm proud of my relationship with 'Star Trek'! 'Star Trek' is a show that I am philosophically compatible with.
Gene Roddenberry continually reminded us that the Star Trek Enterprise was a metaphor for starship Earth. And the strength in this starship came from its diversity, coming together and working in concert as a team. That is the strength of our countries, Canada and the United States. We are nations of diversity.
I'd like to think that, when I explain it, that Mr. Trump will understand marriage is defined by two people who love each other, commit to each other, and will care for each other through thick and thin.
'Star Trek' fans totally accepted my sexual orientation. There are a great number of LGBT people across 'Star Trek' fandom. The show always appealed to people that were different - the geeks and the nerds, and the people who felt they were not quite a part of society, sometimes because they may have been gay or lesbian.
The Russians are taunting the IOC with the homophobic laws that they pass.
I'm a chairman on the Board of Governors for the East-West Players, the longest-running Asian-American theater company in America.
At the core of 'Star Trek' is Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future. So much of science-fiction is about a dystopian society with human civilization having crumbled. He had an affirmative, shining, positive view of the future.
When I was a very young actor, I cruised around in a pretty cool vehicle called the Starship Enterprise.
You know what the lowest rated episode we ever had was? Where Captain Kirk kissed Uhuru - a white man kissing an African-American woman. All the stations in the American South - in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana - refused to air it. And so our ratings plummeted.
Gene Roddenbury felt that television was being wasted. That it had the potential for enlightenment and even inspiration.
In the United States, we have a large, broad middle that are decent, fair-minded people who are too busy to really think about issues other than their next paycheck. Those are the people that we want to get to in order to change the social climate. And Howard Stern has that audience. So I said, 'Let's boldly go where I've never been before.'
The wonderful thing about acting is they're always going to need old codgers!
Dramatic shows are the ones that I am attracted to.
There's no point living at my age with many ingrained great fears.
It'd be nice to be what they call a Renaissance man.
I love being an actor.
I'm particularly impressed by the creation of the character of Spock, which really was Leonard Nimoy's singular creation. He used everything he had.
Children are amazingly adaptable. What would be grotesquely abnormal became my normality in the prisoner of war camps. It became routine for me to line up three times a day to eat lousy food in a noisy mess hall. It became normal for me to go with my father to bathe in a mass shower.