J. Robert Oppenheimer Quotes About War

Quotes about: War

• 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

  War, Science, Names

  J. Robert Oppenheimer's acceptance speech for Army-Navy "Excellence" Award, November 16, 1945.

• The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Change, Country, Military

  Commencement address, 1946.

• Despite the vision and farseeing wisdom of our wartime heads of state, the physicists have felt the peculiarly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for achieving the realization of atomic weapons. Nor can we forget that these weapons as they were in fact used dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war. 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.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Philosophy, War, Responsibility

  Physics in the ContemporaryWorld (1947)

• 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 Oppenheimer

  War, Race, Agreement

• The physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  War, Vulgarity Is, World

  Physics in the ContemporaryWorld (1947)

• I think that all things which evoke discipline: study, and our duties to men and to the commonwealth, war, and personal hardship, and even the need for subsistence, ought to be greeted by us with profound gratitude, for only through them can we attain to the least detachment; and only so can we know peace.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Gratitude, War, Men

  J. Robert Oppenheimer's letter to his brother Frank Oppenheimer (March 12, 1932), as quoted in "Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections" edited by Alice Kimball Smith (p. 155), 1995.

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