#remains on the shortlist for 'best episode of television i've ever seen' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shinelikethunder · 3 months

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You asked me to teach you chess, and I've done that. It's a useful mental exercise. 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 going to 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. 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: Anyone who looks on the world as if it were a game of chess deserves to lose.

— Harold Finch, not knowing how to explain to his AI offspring that it should care about people (but doing his best), Person of Interest 4x11 “If-Then-Else”

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#person of interest #harold finch #michael emerson #if then else #remains on the shortlist for 'best episode of television i've ever seen'#i posted this monologue once years ago but the formatting on old tumblr quote posts gets super mangled so let's see if this is any better #as a bonus now it can come with a clip of emerson's actual performance #the whole ep being framed by flashbacks of him teaching his machine chess and then this one laying it all out... destroys me. every time.

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