J. Robert Oppenheimer Quotes - Page 3

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• This world of ours is a new world, in which the unit of knowledge, the nature of human communities, the order of society, the order of ideas, the very notions of society and culture have changed, and will not return to what they have been in the past. What is new is new, not because it has never been there before, but because it has changed in quality.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Past, Order, Ideas

  J. Robert Oppenheimer (2013). “Uncommon Sense”, p.84, Springer Science & Business Media

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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.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Science, Trying, Roles

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

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• 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.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Philosophy, War, Responsibility

  Physics in the ContemporaryWorld (1947)

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• Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Men, Action, Mystery

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• 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.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Sweet, History, Bombs

  Quoted in In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: usaec Transcript of Hearing Before Personnel Security Board (1954)

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• 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'.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Position, Instance, Electrons

  J. Robert Oppenheimer (2014). “Atom and Void: Essays on Science and Community”, p.31, Princeton University Press

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• Discovery follows discovery, each both raising and answering questions, each ending a long search, and each providing the new instruments for a new search.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Discovery, Long, Innovation

  J. Robert Oppenheimer (2013). “Uncommon Sense”, p.81, Springer Science & Business Media

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• We hunger for nobility: the rare words and acts that harmonize simplicity and truth.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Simplicity, Hunger, Nobility

  J. Robert Oppenheimer (2013). “Uncommon Sense”, p.137, Springer Science & Business Media

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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'.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Appreciation, Effort, Leaving

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

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• The greatest of the changes that science has brought is the acuity of change; the greatest novelty the extent of novelty.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Change, Novelty

  J. Robert Oppenheimer (2013). “Uncommon Sense”, p.71, Springer Science & Business Media

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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.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Encouragement, Buddhist, Discovery

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• To the confusion of our enemies.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Confusion, Enemy

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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.

  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.

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• Taken as a story of human achievement, and human blindness, the discoveries in the sciences are among the great epics.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Taken, Epic, Discovery

  J. Robert Oppenheimer, American Institute of Physics (1972). “Reflections on the resonances of physics history”

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• 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

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• I need physics more than friends.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Needs, Physics, More Than Friends

  J. Robert Oppenheimer's letter to his brother Frank Oppenheimer (October 14, 1929), as quoted in "Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections" edited by Alice Kimball Smith (p. 135), 1995.

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• I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita... "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Change, Gita, World

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

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• Things which stimulate my curiosity are pretty far removed from the practical and therefore from classification.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Curiosity, Classification, Practicals

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• All history teaches us that these questions that we think the pressing ones will be transmuted before they are answered, that they will be replaced by others, and that the very process of discovery will shatter the concepts that we today use to describe our puzzlement.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Thinking, Discovery, Progress

  J. Robert Oppenheimer (2013). “Uncommon Sense”, p.80, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Submit an agreement providing for the peaceful absorbtion of a celestial races in such a manner that our culture would remain intact with guarantee that their presence not be revealed." "One must consider the fact that mis-identification of these space craft for a intercontinental missile in a re-entry phase of flight could lead to accidental nuclear war with horrible consequences.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  War, Race, Agreement

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• 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

  Humor, Vulgarity Is, Sin

  Physics in the ContemporaryWorld (1947)

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• If we must live with a perpetual sense that the world and the men in it are greater than we and too much for us, let it be the measure of our virtue that we know this and seek no comfort.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Men, Comfort, World

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

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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.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Ideas, Two, Technique

  J. Robert Oppenheimer (2013). “Uncommon Sense”, p.75, Springer Science & Business Media

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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.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Creativity, Science, Men

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• When all thermonuclear sources of energy are exhausted a sufficiently heavy star will collapse. Unless fission due to rotation, the radiation of mass, or the blowing off of mass by radiation, reduce the star's mass to the order of that of the sun, this contraction will continue indefinitely.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Stars, Order, Energy

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