Robert Oppenheimer

Manhattan Project leader

Modern influential 140 sayings

Sayings by Robert Oppenheimer

The atomic bomb is a weapon that has no limit to its destructive power. It is a weapon that can destroy cities, and it is a weapon that can destroy nations.

1945 — Testimony before the Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy
Controversial Unverifiable

There must be no more wars.

1945 — Reported statement
Controversial Unverifiable

We have opened a new age, an age of atomic energy, an age of atomic weapons.

1947 — Speech at the Los Alamos Association
Controversial Unverifiable

The atomic bomb is a warning. It is a warning to all nations that they must learn to live together in peace.

1965 — Interview with BBC
Controversial Unverifiable

I carry a great burden of responsibility.

1945 — Reported conversation
Controversial Unverifiable

The atomic bomb is a weapon that has changed the world forever.

1945 — Speech to the American Philosophical Society
Controversial Unverifiable

We have created a monster.

1945 — Reported statement
Controversial Unverifiable

The atomic bomb is not a weapon to be used lightly.

1945 — Testimony before the Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy
Controversial Unverifiable

We have opened a Pandora's Box.

1945 — Reported statement
Controversial Unverifiable

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

1945 — Quoting the Bhagavad-Gita after witnessing the first nuclear explosion (Trinity test)
Humorous Confirmed

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

c. 1950s-1960s — General observation, possibly self-deprecating or admiring
Humorous Unverifiable

There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.

c. 1950s-1960s — Reflecting on scientific intuition and age
Humorous Confirmed

It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so.

c. 1950s-1960s — A pessimistic, darkly humorous outlook on the world
Humorous Unverifiable

I need physics more than friends.

c. 1930s-1940s — A blunt statement about priorities
Humorous Unverifiable

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.

1953 (Foreign Affairs article) — Describing the nuclear arms race
Humorous Unverifiable

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.

1947 — Arthur Dehon Little Memorial Lecture at MIT
Humorous Unverifiable

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

c. 1960s — Reflecting on his upbringing and later experiences
Humorous Unverifiable

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

1967 (Partisan Review) — On the purpose of education
Humorous Unverifiable

Truth, not a pet, is man's best friend.

c. 1950s-1960s — General observation
Humorous Unverifiable

Genius sees the answer before the question.

c. 1950s-1960s — On the nature of genius
Humorous Unverifiable