Captain Christopher Richard Pike

"Because we believe in the value of life." Jim was fully cognizant of what it meant, for Pike to be having this discussion with him--for Spock to be looking on, no doubt taking it all in to be fully considered. "We don't always agree on everything, naturally. And vengeance is a human quality. It's one we try to mitigate, however, because it rarely achieves our ends. We believe it is better for a man to have the opportunity to repent, to develop himself, to find a place in the universe that is not destructive. We cannot know what value he might find in life, or might be found in him. I realize this is hard to believe. I'm not sure I can imagine what that value might be, in Nero's case. But if I deny him that compassion, if I begin picking and choosing who deserves justice and mercy and who does not, then I become what they are. If I decide who lives and dies, I, too, am corrupted."