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Pragmatism is an intellectually safe but ultimately sterile philosophy.
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
Safe
Philosophy
Pragmatism
Sterile
Intellectually
Ultimately
More quotes by J. Robert Oppenheimer
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
Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. (quoting the Bhagavad-Gita after witnessing the first Nuclear explosion.)
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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
Things which stimulate my curiosity are pretty far removed from the practical and therefore from classification.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
The greatest of the changes that science has brought is the acuity of change the greatest novelty the extent of novelty.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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
'It worked.' (said after witnessing the first atomic detonation).
J. Robert Oppenheimer
The physicists have known sin and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
To the confusion of our enemies.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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
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
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
Taken as a story of human achievement, and human blindness, the discoveries in the sciences are among the great epics.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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
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
In the material sciences these are and have been, and are most surely likely to continue to be heroic days.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Truth, not a pet, is man's best friend.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
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
The people of this world must unite or they will perish.
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
