Humorous Sayings

5,479 sayings found from the Modern era

I need physics more than friends.

— Robert Oppenheimer c. 1930s-1940s
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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.

— Robert Oppenheimer 1953 (Foreign Affairs article)
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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.

— Robert Oppenheimer 1947
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My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

— Robert Oppenheimer c. 1960s
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No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

— Robert Oppenheimer 1967 (Partisan Review)
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Truth, not a pet, is man's best friend.

— Robert Oppenheimer c. 1950s-1960s
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Genius sees the answer before the question.

— Robert Oppenheimer c. 1950s-1960s
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The true scientist never loses the faculty of amusement. It is the essence of his being.

— Robert Oppenheimer c. 1950s-1960s
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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 wa…

— Robert Oppenheimer 1949 (Life magazine)
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Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

— Robert Oppenheimer 1966 (Look magazine)
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The people of this world must unite or they will perish.

— Robert Oppenheimer 1945
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There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry... There is no place for dogma in science.

— Robert Oppenheimer c. 1950s
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Knowledge cannot be pursued without morality.

— Robert Oppenheimer c. 1950s-1960s
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We know too much for one man to know too much.

— Robert Oppenheimer c. 1950s-1960s
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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.

— Robert Oppenheimer 1982 (from 'Play to Live: Lectures of Alan Watts' edited by Mark Watts)
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Sometimes the answer to fear does not lie in trying to explain away the causes, sometimes the answer lies in courage.

— Robert Oppenheimer 1982 (from 'Play to Live: Lectures of Alan Watts' edited by Mark Watts)
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Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.

— Robert Oppenheimer c. 1950s-1960s
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The best way to send information is to wrap it up in a person.

— Robert Oppenheimer c. 1950s-1960s
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I had had a continuing smoldering fury about the treatment of Jews in Germany.

— Robert Oppenheimer 1954
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I never accepted Communist dogma or theory.

— Robert Oppenheimer 1954
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