Robert Oppenheimer

The true scientist never loses the faculty of amusement. It is the essence of his being.

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 the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.

Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

The people of this world must unite or they will perish.

There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry... There is no place for dogma in science.

Knowledge cannot be pursued without morality.

We know too much for one man to know too much.

When we deny the EVIL within ourselves, we dehumanize ourselves, and we deprive ourselves not only of our own destiny but of any possibility of dealing with the EVIL of others.

Sometimes the answer to fear does not lie in trying to explain away the causes, sometimes the answer lies in courage.

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

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

I had had a continuing smoldering fury about the treatment of Jews in Germany.

I never accepted Communist dogma or theory.

If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons 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 of Hiroshima.

In the spring of 1929, I returned to the United States. I was homesick for this country. I had learned in my student days a great deal about the new physics. I wanted to pursue this myself, to explain it, and to foster its cultivation.

In the spring of 1936, I was introduced by friends to Jean Tatlock. In the autumn, I began to court her. We were at least twice close enough to marriage to think of ourselves as engaged.

The most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.

Pragmatism is an intellectually safe but ultimately sterile philosophy.

If I had to choose between the two evils, I would rather have a world with no nuclear weapons than a world with nuclear weapons.

The atomic bomb is too terrible to be used as a weapon of war.