"I made one great mistake in my life—when I signed that letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification—the danger that the Germans would make them!"

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Added on April 10, 2026
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Albert Einstein
Original Language: English

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Variant: "I made one mistake in my life—when I signed that letter to President Roosevelt advocating that the bomb should be built. But perhaps I can be forgiven for that because we all felt that there was a high probability that the Germans were working on this problem and that they might succeed and use the atomic bomb to become the master race." Appears in The Expanded Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2000), p. 185. However, in The New Quotable Einstein Calaprice writes "The longer versio