Happy Birthday LeVar Burton!

I think reading is part of the birthright of the human being.

It's definitely true that there are a lot of the devices we used on 'Star Trek,' that came out the imagination of the writers, and the creators that are actually in the world today.

After many years of training myself, strong emotions are now a trigger for me to look at something. I think that all emotions are triggers for us to grow in our level of consciousness.

Because storytelling, and visual storytelling, was put in the hands of everybody, and we have all now become storytellers.

For me, literacy means freedom. For the individual and for society.

I've always been interested in gadgets and technology and I've always been a reader. 

With the technology of tablet computers, if we bring the right content to them and distribute them ubiquitously throughout the land, we can do something about America being ranked 29th in the world in terms of our level of education.

Yeah. I do. I think that we have to continue to expand the areas in which we want our kids to be literate. And social media's going to be a part of their lives. And why not? Why not give them a sense of what the rules of the road are?

Jim Carrey can do anything he wants, right? There are guys like that. I'm not one of those guys, so my career has been cobbled together with what the universe has put in front of me.

I'm excited to see how current and future technologies revolutionize the way we learn.

For me, a good children's book is a good children's book is a good children's book.

I get most of my news updates from electronic and social media.

I'm a firm believer and always have been that there aren't all that many things that you should not express to children in an age-appropriate manner, and as a parent, that is your job - to be discerning as to whether or not your child can handle the information, provided you have the ability to express yourself in that age-appropriate way.

The unvarnished truth is that we have spent the last decade funding the machinery of war, and our children have been sacrificed.

I feel like I have been able to notice throughout the incremental march of history during the course of my own lifetime patterns emerging, and there's a sort of a rubber band effect that happens where social growth and change is concerned.

I fly my geek flag proudly. Absolutely.

You can break down anything for a child, and you have to know what your child is ready for and what your child is not.

We want a book to be a book. We'll have all the interactive bells and whistles but our intent is to engage young people in reading, not to show them a movie.

When I was young, I used to fantasize about being famous. I even practiced my signature ... for autographs. I wanted to be rich and famous. I asked for it. I created it. So now that it's here, I really can't say it sucks.

There would be no Star Trek unless there were transporter malfunctions.

Wearing the visor robs me of acting. It's robs me of how we, as human beings, communicate. Communication is done primarily through the eyes. We can't see Geordi's eyes, so it is like we are cut off from one part of him. That's something I would like to address. Besides, I would think that in the 24th century, there has to be something technologically better than what Geordi's got now.

This wired generation is kind of cool.

Human beings are the laziest creatures in the history of creation. We would rather not do anything if we could avoid it.

We can't afford to sacrifice another generation of American children to bureaucratic politics. We've got to get it done. The future, the health, the life - our nation depends on it and it's just foolish to think or act otherwise.

People always ask me, Could you see out of that thing? And the answer is, no, I couldn't. It was always very funny to me because when the actor puts the visor on 85 to 90 percent of my vision was taken away, yet I'm playing a guy who sees more than everyone else around him. So that's just God's cruel little joke.

I have always been a fan of 'Star Trek.' I love Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future.

I believe fantasy role play is a very healthy form of creative expression. We don't do enough of it as adults. So you won't find me knocking folks who create characters for themselves and dress up on the weekend.

It's not about division. It's not about politics. My concern is how do we come together?

Technobabble brings with it its own challenge. Because it really doesn't mean anything. Well I mean it does to the technically and scientifically proficient, but it really didn't mean much to me, because I'm not an engineer, I just played one on TV. The methodology that I found most successful was to really spit it out as fast as I possibly could. Giving the illusion that I knew what I was talking about when, in fact, I really didn't.

It is no longer appropriate for me as an American to sit by and expect my government to get it done.

I read a lot of science fiction books when I was a kid. And very few of them had heroes of colour in the pages of those novels. There were some, but they were the exceptions and so that's why Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future was really important to me growing up because it said when the future comes, there will be people like you who are vital and important to that mission of going out there and boldly exploring.

Reading a hard copy book, and reading a book on an iPad are slightly different experiences. What they both have in common though is that you must engage your imagination in the process. 

What I love about Star Trek is that it's about inclusion. It's about diversity and inclusion. Star Trek says there is an infinite number of life forms that exist out there in – in the cosmos and they all have value. Every single one of them.

We had to figure out how to produce books in a cost-effective way. 

I don't believe Roots could've happened ten years earlier in America, nor ten years later for that matter. Socially, the timing was perfect in every respect. The Civil Rights Movement had succeeded to the point where America was accustomed to accepting Black people as equal citizens in this society. Then came the Vietnam era which forced us to take an unvarnished look at ourselves and our politics. By the time the late seventies rolled around, I think we were finally ready to deal with the issue of slavery and how its legacy has impact even to this day.

All literature is political.

You know that phrase, love your neighbor as yourself? My hope, as we head towards the millenium, is that we need to take the message to the next level. My neighbor and myself are the same.

I want to live in an America where we are able to marshal all the resources we have at our disposal and that we - people like me, and companies like Apple and Intel and others - can make it our business to put a tablet computer in the hands of every single kid in America. Every single kid.

As long as we are engaged in storytelling that moves the culture forward, it doesn't matter what format it is.

Maturity is a series of shattered illusions.

I'm enormously proud of the fact that Star Trek has really not just sparked an interest, but encouraged, a few generations of people to go into the sciences.

Kids are sponges. They will emulate what they see and what they're exposed to.

And it's here and it's ready and we can really revolutionize the way we educate our children with tablet computers, and I'm committed to doing whatever I can to speaking to whomever I can to send this signal - to pound this message home. Now is the time.

In a society that functions optimally, those who can should naturally want to provide for those who can't. That's how it's designed to work. I truly believe we're here to take care of one another.

I genuinely believe we have an opportunity to revolutionize how we educate our children.

I've always been the sort of guy who's happiest doing more than one thing at a time.

If we marry educational technology with quality, enriching content, that's a circle of win.

Libraries do one thing that no other institution does and that's provide access to all.

We have an amazing advantage right now in that we have developed technology that is so sexy, so engaging for kids.

That's not a role you prepare for. There's no preparation. You don't have time to prepare for the reading of an audiobook. You do the reading of an audiobook in basically two days' time - an unabridged version, maybe three days.