J. Robert Oppenheimer quotes
Born
April 22, 1904 New York City, New York.
Died
February 18, 1967.
Occupation
Teoretical physicist.
J. Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist. Oppenheimer is among those who are credited with being the father of the atomic bomb.
I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they were found because it was possible to find them.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
My mother was born in Baltimore, and before her marriage, she was an artist and teacher of art.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
To try to become happy is to try to build a machine with no other specifications than it shall run noiselessly.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
I had had a continuing smoldering fury about the treatment of Jews in Germany.
– 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
In the material sciences these are and have been, and are most surely likely to continue to be heroic days.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
I need physics more than friends.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
I saw what the Depression was doing to my students. Often they could get no jobs, or jobs which were wholly inadequate. And through them, I began to understand how deeply political and economic events could affect men’s lives. I began to feel the need to participate more fully in the life of the community.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
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 of Hiroshima.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.
– 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
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.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
I never accepted Communist dogma or theory.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer