J. Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Julius Robert Oppenheimerwas an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. As the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, Oppenheimer is among those who are called the "father of the atomic bomb" for their role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II project that developed the first nuclear weapons used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945, in the Trinity test...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhysicist
Date of Birth22 April 1904
CountryUnited States of America
I am literally become death, destroyer of actual worlds.
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.
This is a world in which each of us, knowing his limitations, knowing the evils of superficiality and the terrors of fatigue, will have to cling to what is close to him, to what he knows, to what he can do. . .
There are no secrets about the world of nature. There are secrets about the thoughts and intentions of men.
The physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita...."Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
Optimists think that this is the best of all possible worlds; pessimists fear they are right.
The people of this world must unite or they will perish.
Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. (quoting the Bhagavad-Gita after witnessing the first Nuclear explosion.)
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.
We knew the world would not be the same.
It worked." (said after witnessing the first atomic detonation according to brother, Frank)
I'll never forget his walk; I'll never forget the way he stepped out of the car.... This kind of strut. He had done it.
To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.