Harold Finch quotes from Person of Interest

Harold Finch

Does survivor’s guilt pass when everything that has happened actually is, in fact, your fault?

Harold Finch

Mr. Reese, I understand your frustration with the opacity of the Machine, but there is a reason I chose to make it that way. The Machine only gives us numbers because I would always rather that a human element remain in determining something so critical as someone’s fate. We have free will, and with that comes great responsibility, and some times great loss. I miss her dearly too...

Harold Finch

Since we started this, things have changed. We’ve changed. But the mission, our purpose, has always been constant: to save lives. If that’s changed somehow, if we’re in a place now where the Machine is asking us to commit murder? That’s a place I can’t go. I’m afraid this is where I get off.

Harold Finch

There's one more thing. I'd like you to avoid violence if at all possible. But, if they harm Grace, in any way, kill them all.

Harold Finch

I built the machine to save lives. But how could I be certain that it wouldn't one day determine that all of humanity was irrelevant?

Harold Finch

Truth is, I couldn’t stand by and watch my friends risking everything doing work that I myself began. We’re not just fighting for people’s lives anymore. If we lose and Samaritan wins, the world as we know it will vanish and no one will even notice until it’s far too late.

Harold Finch

When Castro was coming to power in Cuba, the first thing he did was build schools, good schools, so that the people would love him.

Harold Finch

I know that Samaritan's motives are amoral at best, but the thing that Mr. Wilkins was trying to do was an absolute good, and we destroyed it. I'm not sure what we're becoming, Ms. Groves, and it does make me wonder: How much wrong are we willing to do in the name of right?

Harold Finch

There are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the universe. No one could possibly predict them all, even you. Which means that that first move can be terrifying. It's the furthest point from the end of the game. There's a virtually infinite sea of possibilities between you and the other side. But it also means that if you make a mistake there's a nearly infinite amount of ways to fix it. So you should simply relax and play.

Harold Finch

You asked me to teach you chess, and I've done that. It's a useful mental exercise. And through the years, many thinkers have been fascinated by it. But I don't enjoy playing. Do you know why not? Because it was a game that was born during a brutal age when life counted for little and everyone believed that some people were worth more than others. Kings and pawns. I don't think that anyone is worth more than anyone else. I don't envy you the decisions you're gonna have to make. And one day I'll be gone and you'll have no one to talk to. But if you remember nothing else, please remember this chess is just a game. Real people aren't pieces. And you can't assign more value to some of them than to others. Not to me. Not to anyone. People are not a thing that you can sacrifice. The lesson is that anyone who looks on the world as if it was a game of chess, deserves to lose.

Harold Finch

[to Reese] When the time comes for me to pick up a firearm, all will truly be lost.

Harold Finch

OK, don't lose your head, Ms. Groves, this might mean nothing, but they're holding a compact Persian sociopath in room 914.

Harold Finch

Had I known what we'd be up against now, I might have handled things differently.

Harold Finch

My father died of Alzheimer's 25 years ago today, but his real death happened well before that, when he lost all his memories.

Harold Finch

A well thought-out plan takes time. We haven't survived this long by virtue of rash decisions.

Harold Finch

[to John Reese] I'm afraid we're fighting a war we can't win.