Person of Interest (TV Series)

The Contingency (2012)

Michael Emerson: Harold Finch

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Quotes 

• Root : One day, I realized all the dumb, selfish things people do... it's not our fault. No one designed us. We're just an accident, Harold. We're just bad code. But the thing you built... It's perfect. Rational. Beautiful. By design.

  Harold Finch : What I made is just a machine; a system, that's all.

  Root : I don't think so, Harry. You may have fooled Nathan, but I know the truth. If you want to make something that understands human behaviour, it has to be at least as smart as human. You created an intelligence, a life. And then you ripped out its voice, locked it in a cage, and handed it over the most laughably corrupt people imaginable

• Harold Finch : I have no way of accessing it, you know. I made sure of that.

  Root : Everything has a flaw. You know that, Harold, and like I told you, I'm awfully good at finding them.

  Harold Finch : Why? What could you possibly want from it?

  Root : The same thing you did. You may have told yourself you were helping people, but the real reason you built the machine is because the world is boring. Human beings have come as far as we're gonna go. I want to see what happens next.

  Harold Finch : You're right, you and I are alike... in many ways - not that I'd care to admit it. I spent years wondering how people could be so cruel, petty, so selfish - and then I'd think about how you could change them. Fix them. And that's why I've sealed up the machine. Not to protect it from the people I was giving it to... to protect it from me, from people like us, from the things we'd do with it. That's why I'll never help you get control of it.

  Root : I know. You won't have to. Because, you see, Harold, I don't want to control the machine. I just want to set it free.

• Root : No offense but a billionaire genius you are lousy company.

  [Harold is silent] 

  Root : Every system has a flaw. I'm pretty good at finding them. You care about other people. This is your flaw. So if you try to call out to that police officer I won't shoot you. I'll shoot someone else. Please don't make me do that.

  [Harold is still silent] 

  Root : I get it. You're not talking because you don't know how much I already know. I know enough. Enough that you should be trying to figure out what I want and where we are going.

  Harold Finch : Where *are* we going?

  Root : The future, Harold. Although I guess thanks to you we're already there. Not that you'd have any of us know.

  Harold Finch : I don't know who you think I am but you have made a mistake...

  Root : Don't treat me like them. It must be talking to ants to you. They wouldn't grasp what you'd done even if you'd told them, but I've been waiting for you my whole life and you and I share an understanding.

  Harold Finch : Do we? You're a murderer and a thief.

  Root : My mom told me to follow my talents, and I'm good at what I do. Except this one time, when someone stopped me, someone who knew what I was about to do. How did you know, Harold? For months, that's what I couldn't figure out. I don't believe in magic and I knew that the government had spent years trying to build something to protect his panicked little flock. I also thought that they'd never pull it off. Because I didn't know about you.

  [laughs slightly] 

  Root : And you pulled it off, didn't you? Something to watch for all of us. The only question, Harold is why it didn't protect you.