Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.
“Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.”
The World Motivation
Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.
“Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.”
Explore more quotes by J. Robert Oppenheimer on topics like Science, wisdom, and life lessons.
“Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.”
“I never accepted Communist dogma or theory.”
“I need physics more than friends.”
“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”
“To recruit staff, I traveled all over the country talking with people who had been working on one or another aspect of the atomic-energy enterprise and people in radar work, for example, and underwater sound, telling them about the job, the place that we are going to, and enlisting their enthusiasm.”
“If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. ... Choose science.”
“The mineral world is a much more supple and mobile world than could be imagined by the science of the ancients. Vaguely analogous to the metamorphoses of living creatures, there occurs in the most solid rocks, as we now know, perpetual transformation of a mineral species.”
“Science is objective. And in my view we cannot take any experimental results seriously except in the light of good explanations of them.”
“Gandhi, the greatest political genius of our time, has pointed the way. He was shown of what sacrifices people are capable once they have found the right way. His work for the liberation of India is a living testimony to the fact that a will governed by firm conviction is stronger than a seemingly invincible material power.”
“Science doesn't tell us what we should do. It only tells us what is.”
“In the natural sciences, and particularly in chemistry, generalities must come after the detailed knowledge of each fact and not before it.”
“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.”