J. Robert Oppenheimer Quotes
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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 for the pursuit of new truth, into touch with one another.
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This is a world in which each of us, knowing his limitations, knowing the evils of superficiality and the terrors of fatigue, will have to cling to what is close to him, to what he knows, to what he can do. . .
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It is proper to the role of the scientist that he not merely find new truth and communicate it to his fellows, but that he teach, that he try to bring the most honest and intelligible account of new knowledge to all who will try to learn.
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[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 involved the collaboration of scores of scientists from many different lands. But from the first to last the deeply creative, subtle and critical spirit of Niels Bohr guided, restrained, deepened and finally transmuted the enterprise.
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No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.
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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 opportunity for a man to learn anything
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A pragmatist is concerned with results, not reality.
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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 the New Lecture Hall. And when he was done, Professor Whitehead, who presided, thanked him for his efforts, and not least for 'leaving the vast darkness of the subject unobscured'.
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To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.
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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.
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The most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.
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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 values.
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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 inquire. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.
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Truth, not a pet, is man's best friend.
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We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism.
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Pragmatism is an intellectually safe but ultimately sterile philosophy.
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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.
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The people of this world must unite or they will perish.
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Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.
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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.
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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.
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Today, it is not only that our kings do not know mathematics, but our philosophers do not know mathematics and - to go a step further - our mathematicians do not know mathematics.
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We know that the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.
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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.
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The general notions about human understanding...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 is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom.
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The theory of our modern technic shows that nothing is as practical as theory.
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When you see something that is technically sweet you go ahead and do it.
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I need physics more than friends.
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There is something irreversible about acquiring knowledge; and the simulation of the search for it differs in a most profound way from the reality.
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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.
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J. Robert Oppenheimer
- Born: April 22, 1904
- Died: February 18, 1967
- Occupation: Theoretical Physicist
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