J. Robert Oppenheimer Quotes

I can't ever remember not wanting to be a scientist.

Very few recognize science as the high adventure it really is, the wildest of all explorations ever taken by human beings, the chance to glimpse things never seen before, the shrewdest maneuver for discovering how the world works.

Understanding science and pushing the boundaries of science is what makes me immensely satisfied.

I always say to my students that being a scientist is like being an explorer, and I really mean that because, in a sense, I think in science we explore the world, the universe around us.

It is understandable that people want to know how it affects them. But as a scientist, I would hope society would be equally interested in fundamental science.

I've always loved science, but I was never going to make much of a contribution. I'm better off having science as a hobby.

Knowing how contented, free, and joyful is life in the world of science, one fervently wishes that many would enter its portals.

The real value of science is in the getting, and those who have tasted the pleasure of discovery alone know what science is. A problem solved is dead. A world without problems to be solved would be devoid of science.

Empirical sciences prosecuted purely for their own sake, and without philosophic tendency are like a face without eyes.

None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science.

I'm convinced that a controlled disrespect for authority is essential to a scientist. All the good experimental physicists I have known have had an intense curiosity that no Keep Out sign could mute. Physicists do, of course, show a healthy respect for High Voltage, Radiation, and Liquid Hydrogen signs. They are not reckless. I can think of only six who have been killed on the job.

In matters of science, curiosity gratified begets not indolence, but new desires.

For us there is no ignorabimus, and in my opinion none whatever in natural science. In opposition to the foolish ignorabimus our slogan shall be: "We must know - we will know!"

When you start in science, you are brainwashed into believing how careful you must be, and how difficult it is to discover things. There's something that might be called the 'graduate student syndrome'; graduate students hardly believe they can make a discovery.

Having begun my life in science searching for the equation beyond time, I now believe that the deepest secret of the universe is that its essence rests in how it unfolds moment by moment in time.

Scientists do not believe in fundamental and absolute certainties. For the scientist, certainty is never an end, but a search; not the ordering of certainty, but its exploration. For the scientist, certainty represents the highest degree of probability.

It was getting the results that made science worth doing; the accolades were a thin, secondary pleasure.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

The latest authors, like the most ancient, strove to subordinate the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics.

Our goal in science is to discover universal laws of nature. That pursuit fills me with wonder.

The routine of custom tends to deaden even scientific inquiry; it stands in the way of discovery and of the active scientific worker. For discovery and inquiry are synonymous as an occupation. Science is a pursuit, not a coming into possession of the immutable; new theories as points of view are more prized than discoveries that quantitatively increase the store on hand.

I am only a physicist with nothing material to show for my labours. I have never even seen the ionosphere, although I have worked on the subject for thirty years. That does show how lucky people can be. If there had been no ionosphere I would not have been standing here this morning.

I trust and believe that the time spent in this voyage ... will produce its full worth in Natural History; and it appears to me the doing what little we can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as one can in any likelihood pursue.

In truth, the laboratory is the forecourt of the temple of philosophy, and whoso has not offered sacrifices and undergone purification there has little chance of admission into the sanctuary.

Science's job is to map our ignorance.