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.

The world alters as we walk in it, so that the years of man's life measure not some small growth or rearrangement or moderation of what he learned in childhood, but a great upheaval.

It is not surprising that our people should also be asking where they are going, and why, and whether it is worthwhile.

The specialization of science is an inevitable accompaniment of progress; yet it is full of dangers, and it is cruelly wasteful, since so much that is beautiful and enlightening is cut off from most of the world.

There is no more 'open society' than that of scientists themselves.

The true responsibility of a scientist, as we all know, is to the integrity and vigor of his science.

If an experiment is not a moral or an ethical violation, it should be done.

The ultimate value of science is not the power it gives us but the wisdom it imposes.

Genius sees the answer before the question.

The tradition of science is a tradition of change.

I never accepted a Communist line or a Communist word, but I was interested in and felt sympathy for many of the things they were interested in and felt sympathy for.

The time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima.

The impact of the bomb on the thought of man was profound; it was not merely a new weapon; it was a revolutionary change in the relations of man to the universe.

In the material sciences these are and have been, and are most surely likely to continue to be, heroic days.

The thing I loved about physics was that it was a subject where you could think about things that were very, very small and very, very large, and the relation between them.

The only thing I can think of is that if you are a scientist you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realities are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and its values.

To try to become happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.

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

The error of the academic community is not that it is academic, but that it is not academic enough.

The scientist is not responsible for the laws of nature. It is his job to find out how these laws operate.