“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. 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. […]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, Person of Interest