In order to stop the torturing of Ensign Chekov by the Klingons, James Kirk agreed to let Kang take over the Enterprise. Chekov protested, referring to the Klingons as animals, but Commander Kang thought the epithet was misplaced. "Animals. Your captain crawls like one," he said. "A Klingon would never have surrendered."

Because of this Klingon trait, Klingon emissary K'Ehleyr argued against disabling a Klingon ship whose crew was unaware of the peace treaty between the Federation and the Empire. If the ship were merely disabled, she said, the ship's captain would "destroy it himself." Worf concurred by simply quoting the maxim: "Klingon do not surrender."

In Klingon, the for word for "surrender," "{jegh}," also can be translated as "give up," in the sense of abandoning a project. Thus, the saying also means that Klingons are persistent or even obstinate. As Worf put it, "Klingons do not give up easily."