Exploring the mind of J. Robert Oppenheimer offers a glimpse into the thoughts of a man who played a pivotal role in science and history. This collection of 50 quotes by Oppenheimer uncovers insights into his perspective on life, science, and the moral complexities of technological advancement.
- “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “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.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “I am become death, the shatterer of worlds.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “The best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a person.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “Knowledge comes from noticing resemblances and recurrences in the events that happen around us.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “To the confusion of our enemies.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “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.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s one who asks the right questions.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “I need physics more than friends.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “Genius sees the answer before the question.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “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.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “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, ever growing, ever changing, ever more specialized and expert technological world, nevertheless a world of human community.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “An expert is someone who knows some of the worst life mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “We may be drifting into a situation where we would be mortally afraid to use our strength and equally afraid to give it up.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “I think it is a grave danger to the American community to have a subject that is understood by very few and feared by many.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “A scientist cannot hold back innovation because some people are not ready for it.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “Discovery is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “The physicist’s greatest tool is his wastebasket.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “We have made a thing, a most terrible weapon, that has altered abruptly and profoundly the nature of the world… We have made a thing that, by all standards of the world we grew up in, is an evil thing.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “Art and science are not so different; in the pursuit of truth, they enlighten and enrich the human experience.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “The true scientist does not afford the luxury of the right answer, he is the man who poses the right questions.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “It is the business of the future to be dangerous.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “Our job is to remind ourselves that there are more contexts than the one that we’re in — the one that we think is reality.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “I have known despair, and I have known hope. Despair is better. At least despair has truth in it.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “The way to do is to be.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “In the material world, one seeks justification for a hypothesis. In the spiritual world, one seeks enlightenment.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “We cannot put off living until we are ready.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “The true strength of the scientist lies in his ability to explain the complex in simple terms.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “I was not the director of the laboratory for the purpose of the laboratory but for the purpose of the bomb.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “Intelligence is not the ability to store information, but to know where to find it.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “It worked.” (Upon the successful test of the first atomic bomb) – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers – organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative – if we don’t solve these security problems, then people will hold back.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?'” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “It is not possible to be a scientist unless you believe that the knowledge of the world, and the power which this gives, is a thing which is of intrinsic value to humanity, and that you are using it to help in the spread of knowledge and are willing to take the consequences.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “Man is not made for defeat.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
