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Robert Oppenheimer
27 quotes
“It was evening when we came to the river With a low moon over the desert that we had lost in the mountains, forgotten, what with the cold and the sweating and the ranges barring the sky. And when we found it again, In the dry hills down by the river, half withered, we had the hot winds against us. There were two palms by the landing; The yuccas were flowering; there was a light on the far shore, and tamarisks. We waited a long time, in silence. Then we heard the oars creaking and afterwards, I remember, the boatman called us. We did not look back at the mountains.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Crossing" describing memories of New Mexico in Hound and Horn (June 1928)
“I can't think that it would be terrible of me to say — and it is occasionally true — that I need physics more than friends.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his brother Frank Oppenheimer (14 October 1929), published in Robert Oppenheimer : Letters and Recollections (1995) edited by Alice Kimball Smith, p. 135
“Everyone wants rather to be pleasing to women and that desire is not altogether, though it is very largely, a manifestation of vanity. But one cannot aim to be pleasing to women any more than one can aim to have taste, or beauty of expression, or happiness; for these things are not specific aims which one may learn to attain; they are descriptions of the adequacy of one's living. To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his brother Frank (14 October 1929), published in Robert Oppenheimer : Letters and Recollections (1995) edited by Alice Kimball Smith, p. 136
“Despite the vision and farseeing wisdom of our wartime heads of state, the physicists have felt the peculiarly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for achieving the realization of atomic weapons. Nor can we forget that these weapons, as they were in fact used, dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war. 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.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Physics in the Contemporary World, Arthur D. Little Memorial Lecture at M.I.T. (25 November 1947)
“The extreme danger to mankind inherent in the proposal [to develop thermonuclear weapons] wholly outweighs any military advantage.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Robert Oppenheimer et al., Report of the General Advisory Committee, 1949
“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.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "J. Robert Oppenheimer" by L. Barnett, in Life, Vol. 7, No. 9, International Edition (24 October 1949), p. 58; sometimes a partial version (the final sentence) is misattributed to Marcel Proust.
“Our own political life is predicated on openness. 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 way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to enquire. We know that the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Encouragement of Science", an address at Science Talent Institute (6 March 1950), Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 7, #1 (Jan 1951) p. 6-8
“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.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Atomic Weapons and American Policy", Foreign Affairs (July 1953), p. 529
“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.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Science and the Common Understanding (1953)
“The history of science is rich in the example of the fruitfulness of bringing two sets of techniques, two sets of ideas, developed in separate contexts for the pursuit of new truth, into touch with one another.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Science and the Common Understanding (1954); based on 1953 Reith lectures.
“There are no secrets about the world of nature. There are secrets about the thoughts and intentions of men.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Edward R. Murrow, A Conversation with J. Robert Oppenheimer (1955)
“Much has been said of the prospect that man, along with many other forms of life...would disappear as a species. In time, not a long time, that may come to be possible. What is more certain and more immediate is that we would lose much of our human inheritance, much that has made our civilization and our humanity...the threat of the apocalypse will be with us for a long time; the apocalypse may come.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Science and our Times, 1956
“It's not that I don't feel bad about it. It's just that I don't feel worse today than what I felt yesterday.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Response to question on his feelings about the atomic bombings, while visiting Japan in 1960.
“We waited until the blast had passed, walked out of the shelter and then it was extremely solemn. 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, he 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.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview about the Trinity explosion, first broadcast as part of the television documentary The Decision to Drop the Bomb (1965), produced by Fred Freed, NBC White Paper; the translation is his own. Online video is at …
“However, it is my judgment in these things that when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb. I do not think anybody opposed making it; there were some debates about what to do with it after it was made. I cannot very well imagine if we had known in late 1949 what we got to know by early 1951 that the tone of our report would have been the same.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Oppenheimer testifying in his defense in his 1954 security hearings, discussing the American reaction to the first successful Russian test of an atomic bomb and the debate whether to develop the "super" hydrogen bombs w…
“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 a scientist you cannot stop such a thing. If you are a scientist you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realities are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and its values.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists (2 November 1945)
“His early papers are paralyzingly beautiful but they are thoroughly corrupt with errors, and this has delayed the publication of his collected works for almost ten years. A man whose errors can take that long to correct is quite a man.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Memorial lecture delivered on 13 December 1965 at UNESCO headquarters to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Albert Einstein's death, as quoted in Silvan S. Schweber, Einstein and Oppenheimer: The Meaning of Genius (Ca…
“Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Last published words With Oppenheimer on an Autumn Day, Look, Vol. 30, No. 26 (19 December 1966)
“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.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Why Curiosity Driven Research?" by Robert V. Moody (17 February 1995)
“Because I was an idiot.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Oppenheimer's explanation for why he lied to security officers on the Manhattan Project about the so-called Chevalier Affair, in which he claimed to have been approached to assist with Soviet atomic espionage during Wor…
“I can make it clearer; I can't make it simpler.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Words spoken to his class at Berkeley during the period 1932-1934, as quoted by Wendell Furry in American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005), by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, p. 84
“It's 20 years too late. It should have been done the day after Trinity.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Oppenheimer's reply to a question on Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's efforts to urge President Lyndon Johnson to initiate talks to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, in an interview from the early 1960s. Shown in The Day Afte…
“I believe that through discipline, though not through discipline alone, we can achieve serenity, and a certain small but precious measure of the freedom from the accidents of incarnation, and charity, and that detachment which preserves the world which it renounces. I believe that through discipline we can learn to preserve what is essential to our happiness in more and more adverse circumstances, and to abandon with simplicity what would else have seemed to us indispensable; that we come a little to see the world without the gross distortion of personal desire, and in seeing it so, accept more easily our earthly privation and its earthly horror — But because I believe that the reward of discipline is greater than its immediate objective, I would not have you think that discipline without objective is possible: in its nature discipline involves the subjection of the soul to some perhaps minor end; and that end must be real, if the discipline is not to be factitious. Therefore I think that all things which evoke discipline: study, and our duties to men and to the commonwealth, war, and personal hardship, and even the need for subsistence, ought to be greeted by us with profound gratitude, for only through them can we attain to the least detachment; and only so can we know peace.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his brother Frank (12 March 1932), published in Robert Oppenheimer : Letters and Recollections (1995) edited by Alice Kimball Smith, p. 155
“It is with appreciation and gratefulness that I accept from you this scroll for the Los Alamos Laboratory, and for the men and women whose work and whose hearts have made it. It is our hope that in years to come we may look at the scroll and all that it signifies, with pride. Today that pride must be tempered by a profound concern. If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of the nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima. The people of this world must unite or they will perish. This war that has ravaged so much of the earth, has written these words. The atomic bomb has spelled them out for all men to understand. Other men have spoken them in other times, and of other wars, of other weapons. They have not prevailed. There are some misled by a false sense of human history, who hold that they will not prevail today. It is not for us to believe that. By our minds we are committed, committed to a world united, before the common peril, in law and in humanity.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Acceptance Speech, Army-Navy "Excellence" Award (16 November 1945)
“I think it is the opposite of true. Let us not say about use. But my feeling about development became quite different when the practicabilities became clear. When I saw how to do it, it was clear to me that one had to at least make the thing. Then the only problem was what would one do about them when one had them. The program we had in 1949 was a tortured thing that you could well argue did not make a great deal of technical sense. It was therefore possible to argue also that you did not want it even if you could have it. The program in 1951 was technically so sweet that you could not argue about that. It was purely the military, the political and the humane problem of what you were going to do about it once you had it...”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Oppenheimer testifying in his defense in his 1954 security hearings. Date: Friday, April 16.
“To what appeared to be the simplest questions, [modern physics] will tend to give either no answer or an answer which will at first sight be reminiscent more of a strange catechism than of the straightforward affirmatives of physical science. If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron's position changes with time, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say 'no'. The Buddha has given such answers when interrogated as to the conditions of a man's self after his death; but they are not familiar answers for the tradition of seventeenth and eighteenth century science.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: J. R. Oppenheimer, Science and the Common Understanding, (Oxford University Press, 1954) pp 40
“It is my thesis that generally the new things we have learned in science, and specifically what we have learned in atomic physics, do provide us with valid and relevant and greatly needed analogies to human problems lying outside the present domain of science or its present borderlands. ... The general notions about human understanding and community which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture they have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable and central place. What we shall find [in modern physics] is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom. We shall not need to debate whether, so altered, it is old or new.”
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: J. R. Oppenheimer, Science and the Common Understanding, (Oxford University Press, 1954) pp 9–10.