J. Robert Oppenheimer

The atomic bomb is a new kind of power, and a new kind of future.

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

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.

The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.

There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.

The history of science is rich in the 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.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries.

It is not possible to be a scientist unless you believe that it is good to learn... that the knowledge of the world, and the power which this gives, is a thing which is of intrinsic value to humanity.

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

The open society, the unrestricted access to knowledge, the unplanned and uninhibited association of men for its furtherance—these are what may make a vast, complex, ever growing, ever changing, ever more specialized and expert technological world, nevertheless a world of human community.

We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism.

The peoples of this world must unite, or they will perish.

I need physics more than friends.

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.

It is a terrible thing for a man to have to look back upon the past and realize that his life's work has been for nothing.

The problem of doing justice to the implicit, the imponderable, and the unknown is of course not unique to politics. It is always with us in science, it is with us in the most trivial of personal affairs, and it is one of the great problems of writing and of all forms of art.

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

There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.