8 Quotes By J. Robert Oppenheimer


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

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
J. Robert Oppenheimer on death

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass and beyond there is a different country.
J. Robert Oppenheimer on future

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.
J. Robert Oppenheimer on humor

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.
J. Robert Oppenheimer on knowledge

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

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.
J. Robert Oppenheimer on success

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass and beyond there is a different country.
J. Robert Oppenheimer on war