J. Robert Oppenheimer Quotes About Science

Quotes about: Science

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

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

• 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.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Freedom, Science, Men

  "J. Robert Oppenheimer" by L. Barnett in Life Magazine, Volume 7, No. 9, International Edition (p. 58), October 24, 1949.

• 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

  Science, Errors, Doubt

  "J. Robert Oppenheimer" by L. Barnett in Life Magazine, Volume 7, No. 9, International Edition (p. 58), October 24, 1949.

• 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

  Knowledge, Science, Men

  J. Robert Oppenheimer (2014). “Atom and Void: Essays on Science and Community”, p.73, Princeton University Press

• 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

  Inspirational, Children, Science

  "V 65: New Challenges for human communications, Volume 4". Book by International Center for the Typographic Arts, Southern Illinois University, 1965.

• 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.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Science, People, Trying

  "NBC White Paper (The Decision to Drop the Bomb)". Documentary, January 5, 1965.

• There is something irreversible about acquiring knowledge; and the simulation of the search for it differs in a most profound way from the reality.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Knowledge, Science, Reality

  J. Robert Oppenheimer (1947). “Physics in the Contemporary World”

• Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Beautiful, Science, Very Beautiful

  1966 In Look magazine.

• 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.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Art, Struggle, Science

  J. Robert Oppenheimer (2013). “Uncommon Sense”, p.87, Springer Science & Business Media

• 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.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  War, Science, Names

  J. Robert Oppenheimer's acceptance speech for Army-Navy "Excellence" Award, November 16, 1945.

• Science starts with preconception, with the common culture, and with common sense. It moves on to observation, is marked by the discovery of paradox, and is then concerned with the correction of preconception. It moves then to use these corrections for the designing of further observation and for more refined experiment. And as it moves along this course the nature of the evidence and experience that nourish it becomes more and more unfamiliar; it is not just the language that is strange [to common culture].

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Moving, Science, Discovery

• 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.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Jobs, Believe, Science

  J. Robert Oppenheimer's speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists in Los Alamos, New Mexico, www.atomicarchive.com. November 2, 1945.

• [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.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Creativity, Science, Men

• The theory of our modern technic shows that nothing is as practical as theory.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Science, History, Modern

• 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.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Science, Trying, Roles

  J. Robert Oppenheimer (2013). “Uncommon Sense”, p.82, Springer Science & Business Media

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