J. Robert Oppenheimer Quotes

52 quotes in 866 categories

• Bertrand Russell had given a talk on the then new quantum mechanics, of whose wonders he was most appreciative. He spoke hard and earnestly in…
• If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for…
• But when you come right down to it, the reason that we did this job is because it was an organic necessity. If you are…
• The open society, the unrestricted access to knowledge, the unplanned and uninhibited association of men for its furtherance-these are what may make a vast, complex,…
• There is something irreversible about acquiring knowledge; and the simulation of the search for it differs in a most profound way from the reality.
• The best way to send information is to wrap it up in a person.
• Submit an agreement providing for the peaceful absorbtion of a celestial races in such a manner that our culture would remain intact with guarantee that…
• There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free…
• [About the great synthesis of atomic physics in the 1920s:] It was a heroic time. It was not the doing of any one man; it…
• There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free…
• It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not…
• Today, it is not only that our kings do not know mathematics, but our philosophers do not know mathematics and - to go a step…
• The most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.
• In a free world, if it is to remain free, we must maintain, with our lives if need be, but surely by our lives, the…
• We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only…
• I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita...."Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one…
• When we deny the EVIL within ourselves, we dehumanize ourselves, and we deprive ourselves not only of our own destiny but of any possibility of…
• The history of science is rich in example of the fruitfulness of bringing two sets of techniques, two sets of ideas, developed in separate contexts…
• When all thermonuclear sources of energy are exhausted a sufficiently heavy star will collapse. Unless fission due to rotation, the radiation of mass, or the…
• The physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

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