J. Robert Oppenheimer
American · 1904–1967
Theoretical physicist who led the Manhattan Project and spent the rest of his life grappling with the moral consequences of scientific knowledge and the physicist's responsibility to humanity.
Wikipedia ↗“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
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“The physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.”
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“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.”
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“There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.”
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“The open society, the unrestricted access to knowledge, the unplanned and uninhibited association of men for its furtherance — these are what may make a vast, complex, ever growing, ever changing, ever more specialized and expert technological world, nevertheless a world of human community.”
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“Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it. Both always must have the sense of being lost, in order to find.”
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