J. Robert Oppenheimer

If atomic bombs are to be added 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.

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.

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.

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up to the mountain where there is no place to go but down, and to the valley of a new life.

The physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

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.

We have made a thing, a most terrible weapon, that has altered the nature of the world.

The open mind, the open heart, the open society—these are the things that make for progress.

The world is not a collection of isolated events, but a web of interconnected phenomena.

The best way to send a message is to wrap it up in a person.

There are children playing in the streets of a hundred cities who don't know that they are living on a borrowed time.

The problem of doing good in the world is a problem of understanding the world.

Science is not a game; it is a serious business.

The atomic bomb is a reminder that the world is not as simple as we would like it to be.

We have learned to live in a world where the future is uncertain.

The scientist is not a man who knows everything; he is a man who is always learning.

The atomic bomb is a symbol of man's power and his folly.

The world is full of wonders, and we should never stop exploring them.

The atomic bomb has changed everything except our way of thinking.

The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create.