"However, it is my judgment in these things that when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb. I do not think anybody opposed making it; there were some debates about what to do with it after it was made. I cannot very well imagine if we had known in late 1949 what we got to know by early 1951 that the tone of our report would have been the same."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Anti-fascistsEngineers from the United StatesAcademics from the United StatesAgnostics from the United StatesCalifornia Institute of Technology faculty
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Oppenheimer testifying in his defense in his 1954 security hearings, discussing the American reaction to the first successful Russian test of an atomic bomb and the debate whether to develop the "super" hydrogen bombs with vastly higher explosive power; from volume II of the Oppenheimer hearing transcripts, pg266. Date: Tuesday, April 13.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Oppenheimer
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Robert Oppenheimer
Julius Robert Oppenheimer (22 April 1904 – 18 February 1967) was an American physicist and the scientific director of the Manhattan Project.
46 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Robert Oppenheimer →
Related Quotes
"It was evening when we came to the river With a low moon over the desert that we had lost in the mountains, forgotten…"
"I can't think that it would be terrible of me to say — and it is occasionally true — that I need physics more than fr…"
"Everyone wants rather to be pleasing to women and that desire is not altogether, though it is very largely, a manifes…"
"I believe that through discipline, though not through discipline alone, we can achieve serenity, and a certain small …"
"It worked!"
"It is with appreciation and gratefulness that I accept from you this scroll for the Los Alamos Laboratory, and for th…"
"Despite the vision and farseeing wisdom of our wartime heads of state, the physicists have felt the peculiarly intima…"
"The extreme danger to mankind inherent in the proposal [to develop thermonuclear weapons] wholly outweighs any milita…"
"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry … There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and …"
"There are no secrets about the world of nature. There are secrets about the thoughts and intentions of men."