Submit an agreement providing for the peaceful absorbtion of a celestial races in such a manner that our culture would remain intact with guarantee that their presence not be revealed." "One must consider the fact that mis-identification of these space craft for a intercontinental missile in a re-entry phase of flight could lead to accidental nuclear war with horrible consequences.
J. Robert OppenheimerIn 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.
J. Robert OppenheimerWe do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism.
J. Robert OppenheimerToday, 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[About the great synthesis of atomic physics in the 1920s:] It was a heroic time. It was not the doing of any one man; it involved the collaboration of scores of scientists from many different lands. But from the first to last the deeply creative, subtle and critical spirit of Niels Bohr guided, restrained, deepened and finally transmuted the enterprise.
J. Robert Oppenheimer