Person of Interest (TV Series)

Ghosts (2011)

Brett Cullen: Nathan Ingram

Quotes 

• Nathan Ingram : When were you going to tell me?

  Harold Finch : I wasn't gonna tell you, I guess. I'd rather I didn't know myself.

  Nathan Ingram : All these people. And this damn machine knew. *You* knew. That someone wanted to harm them, kill them... and you d nothing?

  Harold Finch : You knew what we were building here. This thing looks for plotters, for schemers. It looks for malicious intent. We built it to stop terrorists before they could act. But a machine doesn't understand the difference between those crimes that are relevant to national security and the ones that are... irrelevant.

  Nathan Ingram : Irrelevant? So you taught it the difference? You want to play God? Is that the deal?

  Harold Finch : No, I don't. That's the whole point. There are exactly eight people in the world that know that this thing exists. If anyone else ever found out, there'd be such an outcry. They'd turn it off. The intelligence the machine produces has already foiled a half dozen major terrorist plots.

  Nathan Ingram : How are we supposed to live with this, knowing that someone out there needs help?

  Harold Finch : Well, we don't have to. I've coded the Machine. Every night at midnight, it deletes the irrelevant list. We didn't build this to save somebody. we built it to save everybody.

• Harold Finch : I'm starting with the basics here. I'm trying to teach it to track people using cell phone location data, facial recognition. I'm almost ready to move on to the next problem.

  Nathan Ingram : What's the next problem?

  Harold Finch : Sorting them all out. Terrorists don't exactly stand out on street corners, you know? You have to teach the machine to sift through the emails, wire-tapped phones, bank transactions, looking for people that are hiding something, living double lives.

  Nathan Ingram : People like you, in other words.

• Nathan Ingram : I know our deal. I schmooze the board, I cash out the checks, I pick up the awards. You do most of the work. But, honestly, this is getting exhausting for me.

  Harold Finch : I'm perfectly happy with the division of labor. Always have been.

  [Gestures to the award] 

  Harold Finch : What's this one for?

  Nathan Ingram : This is for services to humanity. I didn't tell them that we laid off half the staff in order to build this Orwellian nightmare.

  Harold Finch : Said you wanted to make a difference, give something back.