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'It worked.' (said after witnessing the first atomic detonation).

J. Robert Oppenheimer

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J. Robert Oppenheimer
Age: 62 †
Born: 1904
Born: April 22
Died: 1967
Died: February 18
Art Collector
Engineer
Nuclear Physicist
Theoretical Physicist
University Teacher
New York City
New York
Julius Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Witnessing
Atomic
Worked
Firsts
First
Detonation

More quotes by J. Robert Oppenheimer

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In the material sciences these are and have been, and are most surely likely to continue to be heroic days.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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Truth, not a pet, is man's best friend.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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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
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Sometimes the answer to fear does not lie in trying to explain away the causes, sometimes the answer lies in courage.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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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
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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
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The people of this world must unite or they will perish.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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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.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. (quoting the Bhagavad-Gita after witnessing the first Nuclear explosion.)
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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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.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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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.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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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.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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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
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We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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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
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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
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The most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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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.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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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. . .
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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There are no secrets about the world of nature. There are secrets about the thoughts and intentions of men.
J. Robert Oppenheimer