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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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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
Death
Gita
Become
Quoting
Firsts
Witnessing
First
Destroyers
World
Explosion
Explosions
Worlds
Bhagavad
Nuclear
Destroyer

More quotes by 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.
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To the confusion of our enemies.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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The theory of our modern technic shows that nothing is as practical as theory.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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I think that all things which evoke discipline: study, and our duties to men and to the commonwealth, war, and personal hardship, and even the need for subsistence, ought to be greeted by us with profound gratitude, for only through them can we attain to the least detachment and only so can we know peace.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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The physicists have known sin and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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The most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.
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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To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.
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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Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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It is not possible to be a scientist unless you believe that it is good to learn... that it is of the highest value to share your knowledge... with anyone who is interested... that the knowledge of the world, and the power which this gives, is a thing which is of intrinsic value to humanity
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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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
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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 optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.
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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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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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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'It worked.' (said after witnessing the first atomic detonation).
J. Robert Oppenheimer