“But when you come right down to it the reason that we did this job is because it was an organic necessity. If you are a scientist you cannot stop such a thing. If you are a scientist you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realities are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and its values.”

—  Robert Oppenheimer

Speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists (2 November 1945) http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/ManhattanProject/OppyFarewell.shtml

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Nov. 30, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "But when you come right down to it the reason that we did this job is because it was an organic necessity. If you are a…" by Robert Oppenheimer?
Robert Oppenheimer photo
Robert Oppenheimer 25
American theoretical physicist and professor of physics 1904–1967

Related quotes

“wherever you find the greatest good, you will find the greatest evil, because evil loves paradise as much as good.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

Source: All the Little Live Things

Lisa Randall photo

“Faith just doesn't have anything to do with what I'm doing as a scientist. It's nice if you can believe in God, because then you see more of a purpose in things. Even if you don't, though, it doesn't mean that there's no purpose. It doesn't mean that there's no goodness. I think that there's a virtue in being good in and of itself. I think that one can work with the world we have.”

Lisa Randall (1962) American theoretical physicist and an expert on particle physics and cosmology

The Discover Interview: Lisa Randall (July 2006)

“Grandma said […] when you come on something that is good, first thing to do is share it with whoever you can find; that way, the good spreads out to where no telling it will go.”

Forrest Carter book The Education of Little Tree

Source: The Education of Little Tree

Philip Pullman photo

“When you stopped believing in God, did you stop believing in good and evil?”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

"No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels."
Will and Mary in Ch. 33 : Marzipan
His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000)

“When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. […] The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you. […] The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any institution has created, judged by what they did before they came and judged by what they did after.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

You and Your Research (1986)

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan photo

“Find out what really fascinates you and follow that. Almost anything in nature, if you follow it, you will find a scientific problem. That is a better way to do it than following fads, because what is fashionable today may have been solved or fallen out of fashion once you have become a working scientist.”

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (1952) Nobel prize winning American and British structural biologist

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan interview: 'It takes courage to tackle very hard problems in science

Will Rogers photo

“When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do — well, that’s Memoirs.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Source: The Autobiography of Will Rogers (1949), Ch. 16

Nicholas Sparks photo

“…you have to give them both credit for being good parents simply because of the way their kids turned out. We're happily married, successful, ethical, and we remained close as siblings. If your kids can say the same thing later in life, won't you think you did a good job as a parent?”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Dana Sparks, Chapter 14, p. 247
2000s, Three Weeks with My Brother (2004)

Ellen Willis photo

“In practice, attempts to sort out good erotica from bad porn inevitably comes down to "What turns me on is erotic; what turns you on is pornographic."”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

" Feminism, Moralism, and Pornography" (1979) http://www2.ucsc.edu/culturalstudies/EVENTS/Spring09/Rubin-%20Willis%20-%20Feminism,%20Moralism%20&%20Porn.pdf, Beginning To See the Light: Pieces of a Decade (1981)

Related topics