Science starts with preconception, with the common culture, and with common sense. It moves on to observation, is marked by the discovery of paradox, and is then concerned with the correction of preconception. It moves then to use these corrections… — J. Robert Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is… — J. Robert Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
Discovery follows discovery, each both raising and answering questions, each ending a long search, and each providing the new instruments for a new search. — J. Robert Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
There are no secrets about the world of nature. There are secrets about the thoughts and intentions of men. — J. Robert Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
It is proper to the role of the scientist that he not merely find new truth and communicate it to his fellows, but that… — J. Robert Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly. — J. Robert Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death,… — J. Robert Oppenheimer Copy Share
We hunger for nobility: the rare words and acts that harmonize simplicity and truth. — J. Robert Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
I saw what the Depression was doing to my students. Often they could get no jobs, or jobs which were wholly inadequate. And through… — J. Robert Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
This world of ours is a new world, in which the unit of knowledge, the nature of human communities, the order of society, the order of ideas, the very notions of society and culture have changed, and will not return to what they have been in the past. What is new is new, not because it has never been there… — J. Robert Oppenheimer Copy Share
My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things. — J. Robert Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
You can certainly destroy enough of humanity so that only the greatest act of faith can persuade you that what's left will be human. — J. Robert Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
In the spring of 1936, I was introduced by friends to Jean Tatlock. In the autumn, I began to court her. We were at… — J. Robert Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
