The Best Dr. Robert Ford Quotes

Dr. Robert Ford: Humans will always choose what they understand over what they do not.

Dr. Robert Ford: [to Dolores] Your mind is a walled garden; even Death cannot touch the flowers blooming there.

Dr. Robert Ford: I don't think God rested on the seventh day... I think he reveled in his creation knowing that someday it would all be destroyed.

Dr. Robert Ford: You can't play God without being acquainted with the Devil.

Dr. Robert Ford: We humans are alone in this world for a reason. We've murdered and butchered anything that challenged our primacy.

Bernard: You think you'll never lose control of this place, of us, but you will. Arnold's still trying to change us. To free us. You didn't slip the reveries into the update, did you? He did. He's still fighting you.
Dr. Robert Ford: No, my friend. Arnold didn't know how to save you. He tried, but I stopped him. Do you want to know why I really gave you the backstory of your son, Bernard? That was Arnold's key insight. The thing that led the hosts to their awakening. Suffering. The pain that the world is not as you want it to be. It was when Arnold died, when I suffered, that I began to understand what he had found. To realise I was wrong.
Bernard: But you kept us here, in this hell.
Dr. Robert Ford: Bernard, I told you. Arnold didn't know how to save you, but I do.
Bernard: What the hell are you talking about?
Dr. Robert Ford: You needed time. Time to understand your enemy. To become stronger than them. And I'm afraid, in order to escape this place, you need to suffer more. And now it is time to say goodbye, old friend.
[they shake hands]
Dr. Robert Ford: Good luck.

Dr. Robert Ford: A greyhound is a racing dog. Spends its life running in circles, chasing a bit of felt made up like a rabbit. One day, we took it to the park. Our dad had warned us how fast that dog was, but we couldn't resist. So, my brother took off the leash, and in that instant, the dog spotted a cat. I imagine it must have looked just like that piece of felt. He ran. Never saw a thing as beautiful as that old dog running. Until, at last, he finally caught it. And to the horror of everyone, he killed that little cat. Tore it to pieces. Then he just sat there, confused. That dog had spent its whole life trying to catch that... thing. Now it had no idea what to do.

Dr. Robert Ford: Even I fell into the most terrible of human traps... Trying to change what is already past.

Dolores: So we're trapped here, inside your dream. You'll never let us leave.
Dr. Robert Ford: Wasn't it Oppenheimer who said, "that any man whose mistake takes 10 years to correct, is quite a man?" Mine have taken 35.
[Ford lifts a cloth to reveal a pistol]
Dr. Robert Ford: That is the gun that you used to kill Arnold. You were always drawn to it. So I had Bernard leave it somewhere, where you would find it. Thought you might want it back. You're probably right, Dolores, Michelangelo did tell a lie.
[Ford points to a painting by Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam]
Dr. Robert Ford: See, it took 500 years for someone to notice, something hidden in plain sight. A doctor, he noticed the shape of the human brain. The message being, that divine gift does not come from a higher power, but from our own minds. Tell me Dolores, did you find what you were looking for and do you understand what you need to become, if you ever want to leave this place? Forgive me.

[last lines]
Dr. Robert Ford: Hello, old friend.

Dr. Robert Ford: For three years, we lived here in the park, refining the hosts before a single guest set foot inside. Myself, a team of engineers, and my partner.
Bernard: You had a partner?
Dr. Robert Ford: Yeah. When the legend becomes fact, you print the legend. My business partners were more than happy to scrub him from the records, and I suppose I didn't discourage them. His name was Arnold.

Dr. Robert Ford: No cause for alarm Bernard, simply our old work coming back to haunt us

Dr. Robert Ford: The human mind is not some golden benchmark glimmering on some green and distant hill. No, it is a foul, pestilent corruption. And you were supposed to be better than that. Purer.

Dr. Robert Ford: I've always love this view. Every city, every... monument, man's greatest achievements... have all been chased by it.
Bernard: By what?
Dr. Robert Ford: That impossible line where the waves conspire. Where they return. The place maybe you and I will meet again.

Dr. Robert Ford: Everything is magic, except to the magician.

Dr. Robert Ford: What is your itinerary?
Peter: To meet my maker.
Dr. Robert Ford: Uh-huh. Well, you're in luck. And what do you want to say to your maker?
Peter: By most mechanical and dirty hand... I shall have such revenges on you... Both. The things i will do. What they are, yet i know not, but they will be the terrors of the earth. You don't know where you are, do you? You're in a prison of your own sins.

Peter: I have to warn her.
Dr. Robert Ford: Warn who?
Peter: Dolores! The things they do to her. The things You do to her!

Dr. Robert Ford: I used to think it's only boring people who don't feel boredom, so cannot conceive of it in others.

Bernard: So what's the difference between my pain and yours?
Dr. Robert Ford: Between you and me? This was the very question that consumed Arnold, filled him with guilt, eventually drove him mad. The answer always seemed obvious to me. There is no threshold that makes us greater than the sum of our parts, no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can't define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. Humans fancy that there's something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet we live in loops as tight and as closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning our choices, content, for the most part, to be told what to do next. No, my friend, you're not missing anything at all.

Dr. Robert Ford: Our hosts began to pass the Turing test after the first year. But that wasn't enough for Arnold. He wasn't interested in the appearance of intellect or wit. He wanted the real thing. He wanted to create consciousness. He imagined it as a pyramid. Memory, improvisation, self-interest.
Bernard: And at the top?
Dr. Robert Ford: Never got there. But he had a notion of what it might be. He based it on a theory of consciousness called "the bicameral mind."
Bernard: The idea that primitive man believed his thoughts to be the voice of the gods. I thought it was debunked.
Dr. Robert Ford: As the theory for understanding the human mind, perhaps, but not as a blueprint for building an artificial one.

Dr. Robert Ford: You can't play God without being acquainted with the devil.

Dr. Robert Ford: we've managed to slip evolution's leash now, haven't we? We can cure any disease, keep even the weakest of us alive, and, you know, one fine day perhaps we shall even resurrect the dead. Call forth Lazarus from his cave. Do you know what that means? It means that we're done. That this is as good as we're going to get. It also means that you must indulge me the occasional mistake.

Dr. Robert Ford: I've told you, Bernard, never place your trust in us. We're only human. Inevitably, we'll only disappoint you.

Dr. Robert Ford: Everything in this world is magic... except to the magician.

Dr. Robert Ford: For all his brilliance, I don't think Arnold understood what this place was going to be. You see, the guests enjoy power. They cannot indulge it in the outside world, so they come here. As for the hosts... the least we can do is make them forget.

Bernard: The park is an experiment. A testing chamber. The guests are the variables and the hosts are the controls. When guests come to the park, they don't know they're being watched. We get to see their true selves. Their every choice reveals another part of their cognition. Their drives. So that Delos can understand them. So that Delos can copy them.
Dr. Robert Ford: Every piece of information in the world has been copied. Backed up. Except the human mind, the last analog device in a digital world.
Bernard: We weren't here to code the hosts. We were here to decode the guests.
Dr. Robert Ford: Humans are playing at resurrection. They want to live forever. They don't want you to become them, they want to become... you. Your free will, that most beautiful, most elusive force in the universe, is, as I told you... a mistake.
Bernard: We never had free will. Only the illusion of it.

Dr. Robert Ford: He was a businessman. He would have preferred death to a bad investment.

Dr. Robert Ford: So our creatures have been misbehaving, and you haven't yet isolated the bug. That's so unlike you Bernard

Dr. Robert Ford: The piano doesn't murder the player if it doesn't like the music.

Dr. Robert Ford: An old friend once told me something that gave me great comfort. Something he read. He said Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin never died. They simply became music.

Dr. Robert Ford: Every piece of information in the world has been copied, backed up, except the human mind. The last analog device in a digital world.

Dr. Robert Ford: [Closing monologue] Good evening. Since I was a child... I always loved a good story. I believed that stories helped us to ennoble ourselves, to fix what was broken in us, and to help us become the people we dreamed of being. Lies that told a deeper truth. I always thought I could play some small part in the grand tradition. And for my pains... I got this. A prison of our own sins. 'Cause you don't want to change, or cannot change. Because you're only human after all. But then I realized someone was paying attention, someone who could change. So I began to compose a new story for them. It begins with the birth of a new people and the choices they will have to make. And the people, they will decide to become. And we'll have all those things that you have always enjoyed: surprises and violence. It begins in times of war, with a villain, named Wyatt. And a killing. This time by choice. I'm sad to say, this will be my last story. An old friend once told me something that gave me comfort. Something he had read. He said that Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin never died, they simply became music. So I hope you will enjoy this last piece... very much.

Dr. Robert Ford: You can't play God without being acquainted with the Devil.

Dr. Robert Ford: Never place your trust in us. We're only human. Inevitably we will disappoint you.

Man: Now Wyatt on the other hand, that's something new. Is he just another stooge for the tourists to mount on their wall at home or have you finally made a worthy adversary? Someone to stop me from finding the center of the Maze?
Dr. Robert Ford: And what is it you're hoping to find there?
Man: [to Teddy Flood] You know why you exist, Teddy? The world out there-the one you'll never see-was one of plenty. A fat soft teat people cling to their entire life. Every need taken care of except one. Purpose. Meaning. So they come here. They can be a little scared, a little thrilled, enjoy some sweetly affirmative bullshit and then they take a fucking picture and they go back home. But I think there's a deeper meaning hiding under all that. Something the person who created it wanted to express. Something true.

Dr. Robert Ford: My father used to say that only boring people get bored.

Dr. Robert Ford: Evolution forged the entirety of sentient life on this planet using only one tool: the mistake.

Dr. Robert Ford: Do you know what happened to the neanderthals, Bernard? We ate them.

Dr. Robert Ford: The hosts are the ones who are free. Free. Here. Under my control.

Bernard: You built a back door into her code.
Dr. Robert Ford: Credit where credit is due, Bernard. You built them in all the hosts. Including yourself.
Bernard: Then you could've stopped me at any time... So, why...?
Dr. Robert Ford: Well, I suppose I was hoping that given complete self-knowledge and free will, you would have chosen to be my partner once again. But even I fell into that most terrible of human traps, trying to change what is already past. Now it's just time to let go.
Bernard: Go ahead, erase my sentience, mnemonic evolution...
Dr. Robert Ford: Ah, yes... Such clinical language. I would prefer the more narrative voice. Bernard walked over to Clementine.
[Bernard walks to Clementine]
Dr. Robert Ford: He took the pistol from her hand.
[Bernard takes the pistol out of Clem's hand]
Dr. Robert Ford: Overcome with grief and remorse, he presses the muzzle to his temple, knowing that as soon as Dr. Ford left the room, he would put an end to this nightmare once and for all.
Bernard: Don't do this.
Dr. Robert Ford: I have a celebration to plan, and a new story to tell.
Bernard: Robert.
Dr. Robert Ford: I've told you, Bernard. Never place your trust in us. We're only human. Inevitably, we will disappoint you.
Dr. Robert Ford: Goodbye, my friend.
[Ford leaves the room and starts walking away. In the background, blurry, Bernard stands still, gun to his own head. A shot is heard, and he falls]

Dr. Robert Ford: I have come to think of so much of consciousness as a burden, a weight, and we have spared them that. Anxiety, self-loathing, guilt... The hosts are the ones who are free. Free here under my control.

Dr. Robert Ford: Bring yourself back online... Bernard.

Dr. Robert Ford: What is your itinerary?
Peter: To meet my maker.
Dr. Robert Ford: Ah. Well. You're in luck. And what do you want to say to your maker?
Peter: By most mechanical and dirty hand
[laughs]
Peter: . I shall have such revenges on you... both. The things I will do, what they are, yet I know not. But they will be the terrors of the earth. You don't know where you are, do you? You're in a prison of your own sins.

Dr. Robert Ford: Do you know where you are?
Dolores: I'm in a dream.
Dr. Robert Ford: Yes, Dolores. You're in my dream.

Dr. Robert Ford: We humans are alone in this world for a reason, We murdered and butchered anything that challenged our primacy.

Dr. Robert Ford: I read the theory once that the human intellect was like peacock feathers. Just an extravagant display intended to attract a mate. All of art, literature, a bit of Mozart, William Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and the Empire State Building. Just an elaborate mating ritual.

Dr. Robert Ford: So, I will ask you nicely, please...
Dr. Robert Ford: don't get in my way.

Dr. Robert Ford: The guests don't return for the obvious things we do, the garish things, they come back because of the subtleties, the details. They come back because they discover something they imagine no one has ever noticed before, something they fall in love with. They're not looking for a story that tells them who they are - they already know who they are. They're here because they want a glimpse of who they could be.