- Inorganic Life-form (voice): Ugly. Ugly giant bags of mostly water.
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Bags of mostly water?
- Lt. Commander Data: An accurate descriptions of humans, sir. You are over 90% water surrounded by a flexible container.
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: You're a man obsessed with what you do. Who knows what an obsessed man will do to keep going. Kill, perhaps?
- Kurt Mandl: [suppressed voice] I create life... I don't take it!
- Lt. Commander Data: Please show me spectral analysis, magnification 12k.
- Computer Voice: Silicon, germanium.
- Lt. Commander Data: Transistor material.
- Computer Voice: Gallium arsenide.
- Lieutenant Geordi La Forge: Emits light when charged.
- Computer Voice: Cadmium selenide, sulfide.
- Lt. Commander Data: Emits charge when lit.
- Computer Voice: Water, impurities, sodium salts.
- Lieutenant Worf: Conductor.
- Lieutenant Worf: [to Data and Geordi] But is it alive?
- Computer Voice: Probability: positive.
- Lieutenant Worf: I wasn't asking *you*.
- Kurt Mandl: [about terraforming] You see grand romantic concepts. I see unyielding rock under an ocean of sand.
- Counselor Deanna Troi: Terraformers are often obsessive. It frequently goes with the career profile.
- [the crew is analyzing an inorganic but flashing object]
- Doctor Beverly Crusher: Analyze: the pattern of the flashes.
- Computer Voice: Not repetitive or sequential. Pattern not recognized.
- Doctor Beverly Crusher: What is the source of the flashes?
- Computer Voice: Unable to specify. Theoretically not possible from this substance.
- Doctor Beverly Crusher: Disregard incongruity, and theorize as to source.
- Computer Voice: [bleeps extensively] Life.
- Inorganic Life-form (voice): Darkness - death - terrible. Must go home to wet sand. War over.
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Agreed. we will send you home to your wet sand.
- Kurt Mandl: Picard, I must... point out again that we were assured, not once but many times, by the best scientific minds in the Federation, that this planet has no life. No life! And we were not looking. And therefore we did not see.
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: We mean you no harm. Do you believe me?
- Inorganic Life-form (voice): Yes.
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Good. It is important that you trust us.
- Inorganic Life-form (voice): Not yet. You are still too arrogant. Too primitive. Come back three centuries. Perhaps then we trust.
- Kurt Mandl: I wanted to create a place where living things could thrive. And all the while, I was about to destroy the life that is there.
- [the inorganic substance has made a cell division]
- Doctor Beverly Crusher: Two of them!
- Lt. Commander Data: Only life can replicate itself, Doctor. Inorganic or not - it is alive.
- Lt. Commander Data: It would appear the laser's drilling system was reprogrammed, sir. As soon as it's memory bank received power, it turned itself on and went after me. Fortunately, I was able to cope with it.
- Lt. Commander Data: The firing program was dynamic.
- Lieutenant Geordi La Forge: The firing pr... in what way?
- Lt. Commander Data: It adjusted to my tactics. It tracked with me, anticipating. A fixed program could not have done that.
- Inorganic Life-form (voice): Ugly bags of mostly water, we try at peace.