Star Trek, like any good story, says that we're all complicated, and we've all got a little bit of Spock and a little bit of Kirk [laughs] and a little bit of Scotty, maybe some Klingon in us, right? But that is what I mean about figuring it out. Part of figuring it out is being able to work across barriers and differences. There's a certain faith in rationality, tempered by some humility. Which is true of the best art and true of the best science. The sense that we possess these incredible minds that we should use, and we're still just scratching the surface, but we shouldn’t get too cocky. We should remind ourselves that there's a lot of stuff we don't know.

— Barack Obama on Star Trek: The Original Series

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Star Trek, like any good story, says that we're all complicated, and we've all got a little bit of Spock and a little bit of Kirk [laughs] and a little bit of Scotty, maybe some Klingon in us, right? But that is what I mean about figuring it out. Part of figuring it out is being able to work across barriers and differences. There's a certain faith in rationality, tempered by some humility. Which is true of the best art and true of the best science. The sense that we possess these incredible minds that we should use, and we're still just scratching the surface, but we shouldn’t get too cocky. We should remind ourselves that there's a lot of stuff we don't know." in the context of "Barack Obama, “BARACK OBAMA, NEURAL NETS, SELF-DRIVING CARS, AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD”, Scott Dadish, Wired, (Nov 2016)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Star Trek: The Original Series" (About Star Trek: The Original Series) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed February 05, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Barack Obama

About Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States of America from 2009 to 2017. Born in Hawaii, the son of a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas, he won the 2008 presidential election and was re-elected president in November 2012. A member of the U.S. Democratic Party, he was the first African American president. Before becoming president, he represented the 13th district for three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004 and served as United States senator from Illinois between January 4, 2005 and November 16, 2008. While president, he was the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.