I would urge the principle of self-limitation in regard to wealth,” and he made this “plea to the wealthy”: The first step to take, it they would set themselves right, is to live in the midst of superfluous wealth as if they were not the possessors of it; that is, to take for their own use only what they require for the essentials of a civilized life, and to regard the rest as a deposit for the general good, of which they themselves are not to be the beneficiaries.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

J. Robert Oppenheimer Quotes

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

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

There is something irreversible about acquiring knowledge; and the simulation of the search for it differs in a most profound way from the reality.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

I can’t think that it would be terrible of me to say – and it is occasionally true – that I need physics more than friends.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

Things which stimulate my curiosity are pretty far removed from the practical and therefore from classification.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

The theory of our modern technic shows that nothing is as practical as theory.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

If we must live with a perpetual sense that the world and the men in it are greater than we and too much for us, let it be the measure of our virtue that we know this and seek no comfort.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

I need physics more than friends.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

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

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

To the confusion of our enemies.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

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 Hiroshima. The people must unite, or they will perish.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

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

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

All history teaches us that these questions that we think the pressing ones will be transmuted before they are answered, that they will be replaced by others, and that the very process of discovery will shatter the concepts that we today use to describe our puzzlement.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

It is proper to the role of the scientist that he not merely find new truth and communicate it to his fellows, but that he teach, that he try to bring the most honest and intelligible account of new knowledge to all who will try to learn.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

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

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

Mr. President, I have blood on my hands.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

When you see something technically sweet you go ahead and do it, and you argue about what to do about it, only after you have achieved success.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

I would urge the principle of self-limitation in regard to wealth,” and he made this “plea to the wealthy”: The first step to take, it they would set themselves right, is to live in the midst of superfluous wealth as if they were not the possessors of it; that is, to take for their own use only what they require for the essentials of a civilized life, and to regard the rest as a deposit for the general good, of which they themselves are not to be the beneficiaries.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

Being wealthy might seem to be “supremely enviable,” he wrote, but “the business of wealth-getting, and of wealth-enjoyment, when viewed at close range, turns out to be a very different matter.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer
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