“Unfinished Business” quotes from Criminal Minds

[closing narration] Who knows? Perhaps the alteration of one small event may someday bring about the end of the world. But that someday is a long way off, and until then there is a good life to be lived in the here and now.

[opening narration] The greatness of evil lies in its awful accuracy. Without that deadly talent for being in the right place at the right time evil must suffer defeat. For unlike its opposite good, evil is allowed no human failings, no miscalculations. Evil must be perfect or depend upon the imperfections of others.

[closing narration] Without that deadly talent for being in the right place at the right time evil must suffer defeat, and with each defeat doomsday is postponed for at least one more day.

[opening narration] Human life strives ceaselessly to perfect itself, to gain ascendancy. But what of the lower forms of life? Is it not possible that they, too, are conducting experiments and are at this moment on the threshold of deadly success?

[closing narration] When the yearning to gain ascendancy takes the form of a soulless, loveless struggle, the contest must end in unlovely defeat. For without love, drones can never be men, and men can only be drones.

[opening narration] You do not know these men. You may have looked at them, but you did not see them. They are newspapers blowing down a gutter on a windy night. For reasons both sociological and psychological, these three have never joined or been invited to join society. They have never experienced love or friendship, or formed any lasting or constructive relationship, but today, at last, they will become a part of something. They will belong. They will come a little closer to their unrealistic dreams of power and glory. Today, finally they will join th... I almost said the human race. And that would have been a half-truth, for the race they are joining today is only half human.

[to his new recruits] Welcome, gentlemen. The society which you have voluntarily joined is called "The Invisibles." It is subversive and illegal. It is also powerful and large and it is ready. When the invisibles have become the masters of everyone and everything on this planet, you, the vanguard of this virile and violent inevitability, will sit so high that mankind will come to recognize you by the lines in the soles of your feet.

[opening narration] There is a passion in the human heart which is called aspiration. It flares with a noble flame and by its light, Man has traveled from the caves of darkness to the darkness of outer space. But when this passion becomes lust, when its flame is fanned by greed and private hunger, then aspiration becomes ambition, by which sin the angels fell.

[Arguing with Judith Bellero] I spend every hour, every dollar, and every dream developing men and means that are devoted to the prevention of war. That says how much I hate war! And yet I am not sickened or enraged, even by war, as I am by a single soul like yours. Your ambition is singularly the most active form of violence I have ever encountered!

[opening narration] In light of today's growing anxieties it has become more absolute that the wealth of nations consists in the number of superior men that it harbors. It is therefore a matter of deep concern, and deeper consequence, when four of the most magnificent and promising young minds in the country suddenly disappear off the face of the Earth...

[closing narration] The wealth of nations, of a world, consists in the number of superior men that it harbors, and often it seems that these men are too different, too dreaming. And often, because they are driven by powers and dreams strange to us, they are driven away by us. But are they really so different? Are they not, after all, held by the same things that hold us, by strong love and soft hands?

[opening narration] For centuries, Man has looked to the skies and sought to uncover the mystery of the universe. The telescope brought into focus the craters on the moon and the canals on Mars, but it was limited and Man's insistent hunger for knowledge and experience would not be satisfied until he broke the massive chains of gravity and set foot himself on a planet other than his own. Project Mercury was his first venture into space, a testament to his technical ingenuity and courage, a green light to a hundred other projects which would take him still further. This is Project Adonis. A laboratory orbiting a thousand miles above the earth, a tiny far flung world connected only by radio and memory, and inhabited by a handful of men dedicated to removing the unknown for future space travelers. At ten minutes after six, on January 8th, Lieutenant Rubert Howard stumbled upon something clinging to the wall of the space lock that appeared alive. He called them space barnacles for temporary identification. They were not.

[closing narration] There are many things up there. Evil and hungry, awesome and splendid. And gentle things, too. Merciful things... like rain.

[opening narration] When fear is too terrible, when reality is too agonizing, we seek escape in manufactured danger, in the thrills and pleasures of pretending... in the amusement parks of our unamusing world. Here, in frantic pretending, Man finds escape and temporary peace, and goes home tired enough to sleep a short, deep sleep. But what happens here when night comes? When pretending ends, and reality begins?

[opening narration] In Man's conquest of space, his own moon must be the first to surrender. From there he will step his way across the heavens to the edge of infinity. Each step will be as uncertain as the last, yet each will bring him closer to ultimate truth... Lunar Expedition One: Here a handful of brave scientists and technicians pave the way to the future. Their mission: to collect information that will eventually enable Man to inhabit the Moon; to use the Moon as a springboard to the stars. Once during each twenty-four hour period, a force of three, commanded by General Lee Stocker and including Lieutenant Travers and Major Clint Anderson, makes its slow, uncharted way across the lunar surface, a surface whose depths and desires are, as yet, unprobed...