The open society, the unrestricted access to knowledge, the unplanned and uninhibited association of men for its furtherance-these are what may make a vast, complex, ever growing, ever changing, ever more specialized and expert technological world, nevertheless a world of human community.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

J. Robert Oppenheimer Quotes

A pragmatist is concerned with results, not reality.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

You can certainly destroy enough of humanity so that only the greatest act of faith can persuade you that what’s left will be human.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

When you see something that is technically sweet you go ahead and do it.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

There are no secrets about the world of nature. There are secrets about the thoughts and intentions of men.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

The history of science is rich in example of the fruitfulness of bringing two sets of techniques, two sets of ideas, developed in separate contexts for the pursuit of new truth, into touch with one another.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

In a free world, if it is to remain free, we must maintain, with our lives if need be, but surely by our lives, the opportunity for a man to learn anything.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

Today, it is not only that our kings do not know mathematics, but our philosophers do not know mathematics and – to go a step further – our mathematicians do not know mathematics.

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

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
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