We know that the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.

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

The general notions about human understanding...which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture, they have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable and central place. What we shall find is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom.

Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. (quoting the Bhagavad-Gita after witnessing the first Nuclear explosion.)

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

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.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.