No Compromises
"I'm sorry, but I'm..."
"Working. Yes, I can see. Books, manuals, directives, regulations, the geometries that circumscribe your awaken life, drawn narrower and narrower until nothing fits inside them anymore."
Lochley and Byron

"Where is it written that all our dreams must be small ones?"
Byron

The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari
"Prophesy is a guess that comes true. When it doesn't, it's a metaphor."
Vir in Londo's hallucination

"Whether it was me or my world, whether it was a total stranger or your worst enemy, you were a witness! It doesn't matter if they stopped. It doesn't matter if they'd listen. You had an obligation to speak out!"
G'kar in Londo's hallucination

The Paragon of Animals
"Dukhat once told me: 'If you can create sufficient fear in your enemies, you may not have to fight them. Always remember that terror is also a form of communication.'"
Delenn

"The Universe speaks in many languages, but only one voice.
The language is not Narn or Human or Centauri or Gaim or Minbari.
It speaks in the language of hope. It speaks in the language of trust.
It speaks in the language of strength, and the language of compassion.
It is the language of the heart and the language of the soul.
But always it is the same voice.
It is the voice of our ancestors speaking through us.
And the voice of our inheritors waiting to be born.
It is the small, still voice that says 'We are one'.
No matter the blood, no matter the skin,
No matter the world, no matter the star,
We are one.
No matter the pain, no matter the darkness,
No matter the loss, no matter the fear.
We are one.
Here, gathered together in common cause
We agree to recognize this singular truth and this singular rule:
That we must be kind to one another.
Because each voice enriches us and ennobles us,
And each voice lost diminishes us.
We are the voice of the universe, the soul of creation,
The fire that will light the way to a better future.
We are one. "
Part of the second draft of the declaration of principles of the Interstellar Alliance

A View from the Gallery
"I was... never a child. I had responsibilities. I've had responsibilities for as long as I can remember. Duty. Honor. Family."
"Ah. That explains a great deal."
"Really? And what exactly does it explain, G'Kar?"
"I spent my years in one shelter after another. But sooner or later, I was able to leave the shelter and walk out into the daylight. You do not have that luxury. You carry your shelter with you... every day. You didn't grow up. You grew old."
Londo and G'Kar

"My mother used to tell me: God knows the age of every tree and the color of every flower and He knows just how wide your shoulders are. And He'll never give you anything to carry that's bigger than you can handle."
"Maybe that's what this place is really about. Maybe that's what we have to do to get around here."
"What's that?"
"Grow bigger shoulders."
Mack and Bo

Secrets of the Soul
"That's why we're all here: to better understand one another and treat each other with sympathy and compassion, commodities which are all too often in short supply."
Franklin

[a man hits Byron three times]
"Was one the same as three? Was three the same as one and two?"
"Wha..."
"Was there any difference between one, two, and three?"
"I ... I ..."
"And what would you expect to get out of four, five, and six that you did not get out of one, two, and three? Your anger has nothing to do with me. What will satisfy your anger will never come from me or anyone else here. I'm afraid you must look for it elsewhere."
Byron and a thug

"No tyranny has ever really lasted. No government based on violence has endured. Sooner or later, they all fall. We're here to build a new life for ourselves, a home among the stars. Would you build a home on a foundation you knew would not last?"
Byron

Day of the Dead
"You see, making people laugh, well, it's okay - always makes me feel good to get a laugh - but politics is important."
"You two have a real gift. When things got bad under President Clark, you could get away saying things on your show that no-one else dared to say."
"We could say it because comedians don't matter."
"If you don't matter, then nothing matters. The only reason politics exists is to ensure that people have the freedom to laugh."
Rebo and Sheridan

Strange Relations
"You don't have to solve every problem all at once. Problems are solved in pieces. If you're on the seventh floor of a burning building, you can either die or jump out the window. Once you're out the window, you're alive for another two seconds, during which time you figure out the solution to the next problem and so on and so on."
Lochley

Tragedy of Telepaths
"Why is that we always break up our history by the wars, not the years of peace? The hundred years war, war of 1812, the first three world wars, the Dilgar war, the war of the shining star, the Minbari war, the Shadow war. Why the war and not the peace? Because it's exciting, and because on some level people like to see something big fall apart and explode from the inside out."
Garibaldi

Phoenix Rising
"I tried to teach them, to show them that there is another way than violence. Did I fail that badly?"
"You can't change human nature, Byron."
"Then there is not much point in living, is there? We can't hope for something better, something nobler, at least something kinder."
Byron and Lyta

The Ragged Edge
"All my life I have been responsible only for myself. When I risked, I risked alone to avoid making others pay the price for my mistakes. They want me to choose them another way. What if I show them the wrong way? What if they come to me not because of the lesson but because of the teacher? I worry, Ta'Lon, that my shadow may become greater than the message."
G'Kar

"In the past we had little to do with other races. Evolution teaches us that we must fight that which is different in order secure land, food, and mates for ourselves, but we must reach a point when the nobility of intellect asserts itself and says: No. We need not be afraid of those we are different, we can embrace that difference and learn from it."
G'Kar

Meditations on the Abyss
"If I take a lamp and shine it toward the wall, a bright spot will appear on the wall. The lamp is our search for truth, for understanding. Too often we assume that the light on the wall is god. But the light is not the goal of the search, it is the result of the search. More intense the search, the brighter the light on the wall. The brighter the light on the wall, the greater the sense of revelation upon seeing it. Similarly, someone who does not search, who does not bring a lantern with him, sees nothing. What we perceive as god, is byproduct of our search for god. It may simply be appreciation of the light - pure and brighter. Not understanding that it comes from us. Sometimes we stand in front of the light and assume we are the center of the universe. God looks astonishingly like we do. Or we turn to look at our shadow and assume all is darkness. If we allow ourself get in the way, we defeat the purpose, which is to illuminate the wall in all it's beauty and in all its flaws and so better understand the world around us."
G'Kar

"But we can't be free, until we learn to laugh at ourselves. Once you look in the mirror and see just how foolish we can be, laughter is inevitable. And from laughter comes wisdom."
G'Kar

And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder
"We're all born as molecules in the hearts of a billion stars. Molecules, that don't understand politics or policies or differences. Over a billion years we foolish molecules forget who we are and where we came from. In desperate acts of ego we give ourselves names, fight over lines and maps and pretend our light is better than everyone elses. The flame reminds us of the piece of those stars that lives inside us. A spark that says: 'You should know better'. The flame also reminds us that life is precious as each flame is unique. When it goes out it's gone forever and there will never be another quite like it."
Delenn

The Fall of Centauri Prime
"Isn't it strange, Gkar... whe we first met I had no power and all the choices I could ever want, and now I have all the power I could ever want and no choices at all."
Londo

"I have to go now, Londo. I have been many things in my life, Mollari. I have been silly, I have been quiet when I should have spoken, I have been foolish, and I have wasted far to much time, but I am still Centauri and I am not afraid."
Last words of the Centauri Regent

"Mollari... understand that I can never forgive your people for what they did to my world. My people can never forgive your people. But I... can forgive... you."
G'Kar to Londo

"The great thing about war is that it advances technology. Bad thing is about war is that most of this technology is destructive."
Franklin

Objects in Motion
"There is no normal life, Michael. There is just life."
Lise

"We are all the sum of our tears. Too little and the ground is not fertile and nothing can grow there; too much, the best of us is washed away. "
G'Kar

"I believe that when we leave a place part of it goes with us and part of us remains. Go any where in this station when it is quiet and just listen. After a while you will hear the echoes of all our conversations, every thought and word we've exchanged. Long after we are gone, our voices will linger in these walls for as long as this place remains. But I will admit that the part of me is going, very much miss the part of you that is staying."
G'Kar says goodbye to Sheridan

Objects at Rest
"When I was first assigned to Babylon 5, I had to learn to speak several languages: Drazi, Brakiri, Centauri, and of course English - the human language of commerce. Some words have always come easier to me, than others. One of the most difficult words for me was goodbye. There is no corresponding word for goodbye in Minbari. All our partings contain, within them, the possibility of meeting again in other places, in other times, in other lives. So you will excuse me, if I do not say goodbye. Our souls are a part of this place. Our hopes, the foundation of our future. And we will pass this way again."
Delenn

"From time to time, you will make mistakes. They are inevitable. Sometimes those mistakes will be huge. What matters is that you learn from them. There is nothing wrong with falling down as long as you end up just two inches taller when you pick yourself off the fall. At times you may end up far away from home. You may not be sure of where you belong anymore. Home is always there, because home is not a place. It is wherever your passion takes you. As you continue on your path, you will lose some friends and gain some new ones. The process is painful, but often necessary. They will change and you will change, because life is change. From time to time, they must find their own way and that way may not be yours. Enjoy them for what they are and remember them for what they were. Oh, there's not much left. Except, I believe... I really do believe that sooner or later, no matter what happened, things do work out. We have hard times. We suffer. We lose loved ones. The road is never easy. It was never meant to be easy, but in the long run, if you stay true to what you believe, things do work out. Always be willing to fight for what you believe in. It doesn't matter if thousand people agree with you or one person agrees with you. It doesn't matter if you stand completely alone. Fight for what you believe."
Part of a recording Sheridan made for his unborn son

Sleeping in Light
"Babylon 5 was the last of the Babylon stations. There would never be another. It changed the future, and it changed us. It taught us that we have to create the future, or others will do it for us. It showed us that we have to take care of one another, because if we don't, then who will? And that true strength sometimes comes from the most unlikely places. Mostly though I think it taught us that there can always be new beginnings. Even for people like us."
Ivanova

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