J. Robert Oppenheimer Quotes

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, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. (quoting the Bhagavad-Gita after witnessing the first Nuclear explosion.)

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

Genius sees the answer before the question.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

The people of this world must unite or they will perish.

Truth, not a pet, is man's best friend.

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 to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.

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 dealing with the EVIL of others.

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 war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima. The people must unite or they will perish.

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.

There are no secrets about the world of nature. There are secrets about the thoughts and intentions of men.

Sometimes the answer to fear does not lie in trying to explain away the causes, sometimes the answer lies in courage.

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 attempt to prevent it from doing so.

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

The best way to send information is to wrap it up in a person.

Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

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 to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.

Optimists think that this is the best of all possible worlds; pessimists fear they are right.

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.

Both the man of science and the man of art live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it. Both, as a measure of their creation, have always had to do with the harmonization of what is new with what is familiar, with the balance between novelty and synthesis, with the struggle to make partial order in total chaos.... This cannot be an easy life.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.

We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism.

It is not possible to be a scientist unless you believe that it is good to learn... that it is of the highest value to share your knowledge... with anyone who is interested... that the knowledge of the world, and the power which this gives, is a thing which is of intrinsic value to humanity