Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (TV Series)

In the Hands of the Prophets (1993)

Louise Fletcher: Vedek Winn

Photos 

Quotes 

• Vedek Winn : You live without a soul, Commander. You and your Federation exist in a universe of darkness, and you would drag us in there with you. But we will not go!

  Commander Sisko : You have just made your first mistake, Vedek.

  Vedek Winn : Have I?

  Commander Sisko : The Bajorans who have lived with us on the station, who have worked with us for months, who helped us move this station to protect the wormhole, who joined us to explore the Gamma Quadrant, who have begun to build the future of Bajor with us, these people know that we are neither the enemy nor the devil. We don't always agree. We have some damn good fights in fact. But we always come away from them, with a little better understanding and appreciation of each other. You won't succeed here. The school will reopen, and when your rhetoric gets old, the Bajoran parents will bring their children back.

  Vedek Winn : We'll see.

• Vedek Winn : Do you believe the Celestial Temple of the Prophets exists within the passage?

  Keiko O'Brien : I respect that the Bajoran people believe that it does.

  Vedek Winn : But that's not what you teach?

  Keiko O'Brien : No, I don't teach Bajoran spiritual beliefs; that's your job. Mine is to open the children's minds to history, to literature, to mathematics, to science.

  Vedek Winn : You *are* opening the children's minds - to blasphemy. And I cannot permit it to continue.

• Vedek Winn : The course the Prophets choose for us may not always be comfortable. But we must follow it.

• Vedek Winn : I once asked Kai Opaka why a disbeliever was destined to seek the Prophets. And she told me that one must never look into the eyes of one's own gods. I disagreed. I told her I would do anything to look into their eyes. She suggested that I sit in darkness for a day, and quite properly so. She cannot be replaced, and I miss her deeply.

• [the school has been blown up, but no one has come to harm] 

  Vedek Winn : The Prophets have been kind today.

  Commander Sisko : The Prophets had nothing to do with what happened here today. This was the work of a disturbed and violent mind, who listened to your voice, not the Prophets'.

  Vedek Winn : Is the Emissary holding *me* responsible for this act of terrorism?

  Commander Sisko : The Commander of this station is.

  Vedek Winn : May the Prophets forgive you for abandoning them.