Top 100 Kai Bird Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “As the sociologist Daniel Bell later observed, Oppenheimer’s ordeal signified that the postwar “messianic role of the scientists” was now at an end.”

— Kai Bird

2. “No one can be certain of Oppenheimer’s reaction had he learned that on the eve of the Hiroshima bombing, the president knew the Japanese were “looking for peace,” and that the military use of atomic bombs on cities was an option rather than a necessity for ending the war in August.”

— Kai Bird

3. “My two great loves are physics and New Mexico. It’s a pity they can’t be combined.”

— Kai Bird

4. “The kind of person that I admire most would be one who becomes extraordinarily good at doing a lot of things but still maintains a tear-stained countenance.”

— Kai Bird

5. “Einstein, of course, didn’t think America was Nazi Germany and he didn’t believe Oppenheimer needed to flee. But he was truly alarmed by McCarthyism. In early 1951 he wrote his friend Queen Elizabeth of Belgium that here in America, “The German calamity of years ago repeats itself: People acquiesce without resistance and align themselves with the forces of evil.”

— Kai Bird

6. “The reason why a bad philosophy leads to such hell is that it is what you think and want and treasure and foster in times of preparation that determine what you do in the pinch, and that it takes an error to father a sin.”

— Kai Bird

7. “Adler returned to his father’s Temple Emanu-El in 1873 and preached a sermon on what he called the “Judaism of the Future.” To survive in the modern age, the younger Adler argued, Judaism must renounce its “narrow spirit of exclusion.” Instead of defining themselves by their biblical identity as the “Chosen People,” Jews should distinguish themselves by their social concern and their deeds on behalf of the laboring classes.”

— Kai Bird

8. “Palestinian guerrillas, in a bold and coordinated action, created this newest crisis Sunday, and in doing so they accomplished what they set out to do: they thrust back into the world’s attention a problem diplomats have tended to shunt aside in hesitant steps towards Middle East peace.”

— Kai Bird

9. “Man is a creature whose substance is faith. What his faith is, he is.”

— Kai Bird

10. “Why, Oppenheimer knows about everything. He can talk to you about anything you bring up. Well, not exactly. I guess there are a few things he doesn’t know about. He doesn’t know anything about sports.”

— Kai Bird

11. “Eisenhower understood that Oppenheimer might well be the victim of scurrilous charges. But having ordered an investigation, he was not about to stop the process. Such a move would leave him vulnerable to a charge from McCarthy that the White House was shielding a potential security risk. So, the president sent a formal note to the attorney general, ordering him “to place a blank wall” between Oppenheimer and classified material.”

— Kai Bird

12. “Great wits are near to madness, closely allied and thin partitions do their bounds divide.”

— Kai Bird

13. “His answer, given to me with tears in his eyes: ‘Damn it, I happen to love this country.”

— Kai Bird

14. “Oppenheimer’s warnings were ignored – and ultimately, he was silenced. Like that rebellious Greek god Prometheus – who stole fire from Zeus and bestowed it upon humankind, Oppenheimer gave us atomic fire. But then, when he tried to control it, when he sought to make us aware of its terrible dangers, the powers-that-be, like Zeus, rose up in anger to punish him.”

— Kai Bird

15. “A keen observer of people, Cherniss sensed a disconnect in Robert. Here was a man, he thought, who was “very sharp intellectually.” People thought him complicated simply because he was interested in so many things, and knew so much. But on an emotional level, “he wanted to be a simple person, simple in the good sense of the word.” Robert “wanted friends very much,” Cherniss said. And yet, despite his tremendous personal charm, “he didn’t quite know how to make friends.”

— Kai Bird

16. “I do so want you to be able to enjoy life in its best and fullest sense, and you will help me take care of you? To take care of someone whom one really loves has an indescribable sweetness of which a whole lifetime cannot rob me. Good-night, dearest.”

— Kai Bird

17. “I am very distressed, as I assume you are, over the Oppenheimer matter. I feel that it is somewhat like inquiring into the security risk of a Newton or a Galileo.”

— Kai Bird

18. “According to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, when he was informed of the existence of the bomb at the Potsdam Conference in July, he told Stimson he thought an atomic bombing was unnecessary because “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

— Kai Bird

19. “Einstein’s instincts were right – and time would demonstrate that Oppenheimer’s were wrong. “Oppenheimer is not a gypsy like me,” Einstein confided to his close friend Johanna Fantova. “I was born with the skin of an elephant; there is no one who can hurt me.” Oppenheimer, he thought, clearly was a man who was easily hurt – and intimidated.”

— Kai Bird

20. “And only through discipline is it possible “to see the world without the gross distortion of personal desire, and in seeing it so, accept more easily our earthly privation and its earthly horror.”

— Kai Bird

21. “He reminded MacLeish of the “profound part that culture and society play in the very definition of human values, human salvation and liberation.” Therefore, “I think that what is needed is something far subtler than the emancipation of the individual from society; it involves, with an awareness that the past one hundred and fifty years have rendered progressively more acute, the basic dependence of man on his fellows.”

— Kai Bird

22. “Modern Prometheans have raided Mount Olympus again and have brought back for man the very thunderbolts of Zeus.”

— Kai Bird

23. “Funny how the mountains always inspire our work.”

— Kai Bird

24. “To take care of someone whom one really loves has an indescribable sweetness of which a whole lifetime cannot rob me.”

— Kai Bird

25. “My feeling about myself,” Oppenheimer later said of this period in his life, “was always one of extreme discontent. I had very little sensitiveness to human beings, very little humility before the realities of this world.”

— Kai Bird

26. “Try to find out, by watching yourself, what you really want; if you approve of it, try to get it; if you disapprove of it, try to get over it.”

— Kai Bird

27. “What would happen to a country found to be building nuclear weapons? Baruch thought a stockpile of nuclear weapons should be set aside and automatically used against any country found in violation. He called this “condign punishment.”

— Kai Bird

28. “Edsall insisted, “Tolstoy is the writer I most enjoy.” “No, no, Dostoyevsky is superior,” Oppenheimer said. “He gets to the soul and torment of man.”

— Kai Bird

29. “What are we to make of a civilization which has always regarded ethics as an essential part of human life,” he asked, but “which has not been able to talk about the prospect of killing almost everybody except in prudential and game-theoretical terms?”

— Kai Bird

30. “How can you do both? In physics we try to tell people in such a way that they understand something that nobody knew before. In the case of poetry, it’s the exact opposite.” Flattered, Robert just laughed.”

— Kai Bird

31. “Indifference to the sufferings one causes... is the terrible and permanent form of cruelty.”

— Kai Bird

32. “I need physics more than friends,” he confessed to Frank in the autumn of 1929.”

— Kai Bird

33. “But Strauss was not a student; he was a powerful, thin-skinned, vengeful man easily humiliated. He left the hearing room that day very angry. “I remember clearly,” said Gordon Dean, another AEC commissioner, “the terrible look on Lewis’ face.” Years later, David Lilienthal vividly recalled, “There was a look of hatred there that you don’t see very often in a man’s face.”

— Kai Bird

34. “An inner voice tells me that this is not the true Jacob. The theory accomplishes a lot, but it does not bring us closer to the secrets of the Old One. In any case, I am convinced that He does not play dice.”

— Kai Bird

35. “The dawn invests our substance with desire And the slow light betrays us, and our wistfulness: When the celestial saffron Is faded and grown colourless, And the sun Gone sterile, and the growing fire Stirs us to waken, We find ourselves again Each in his separate prison Ready, hopeless For negotiation With other men.”

— Kai Bird

36. “March 9–10, 1945, 334 B-29 aircraft dropped tons of jellied gasoline – napalm – and high explosives on Tokyo. The resulting firestorm killed an estimated 100,000 people and completely burned out 15.8 square miles of the city. The fire-bombing raids continued and by July 1945, all but five of Japan’s major cities had been razed and hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians had been killed. This was total warfare, an attack aimed at the destruction of a nation, not just its military targets.”

— Kai Bird

37. “Teller would pay dearly for what he had said. Later that summer, on a visit to Los Alamos, Teller spotted an old friend, Bob Christy, in the dining hall. Walking over to greet him with outstretched hand, Teller was stunned when Christy refused to shake hands and abruptly turned his back. Standing close by was a furious Rabi, who said, “I won’t shake your hand, either, Edward.” Stunned, Teller went back to his hotel room and packed his bags.”

— Kai Bird

38. “Oppenheimer argued that concealing information about the bomb increased the danger of misunderstandings.”

— Kai Bird

39. “Wartime compelled some mild-mannered men to contemplate what was once unthinkable.”

— Kai Bird

40. “In his speeches about the Institute, Oppenheimer continually emphasized that science needed the humanities to better understand its own character and consequences.”

— Kai Bird

41. “But I have never observed in any one of these other groups quite the spirit of belonging together, quite the urge to reminisce about the days of the laboratory, quite the feeling that this was really the great time of their lives. That this was true of Los Alamos was mainly due to Oppenheimer. He was a leader.”

— Kai Bird

42. “His coughing was incessant and his weight was down to 115 pounds, skin-and-bones for a man 5 feet 10 inches tall. His energy level never flagged, but he seemed to be literally disappearing little by little, day after day.”

— Kai Bird

43. “He harshly criticized Soviet tyranny, but lamented the fact that so many Americans were willing to sacrifice their civil liberties in the name of anticommunism.”

— Kai Bird

44. “He was always very kind and considerate to anybody below him,” recalled Harold Cherniss. “But not at all to people who might be considered his intellectual equals. And this, of course, irritated people, made people very angry, and made him enemies.” Wendell.”

— Kai Bird

45. “The best way to send information,” he explained, “is to wrap it up in a person.”

— Kai Bird

46. “His physics was good, but his arithmetic awful.”

— Kai Bird

47. “His deepest fear was that its invention would inspire a deadly nuclear arms race between the West and the Soviet Union. To prevent this, he insisted, it was imperative that the Russians be told about the existence of the bomb project, and be assured that it was no threat to them.”

— Kai Bird

48. “He told friends that this ancient Hindu text – “The Lord’s Song” – was “the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.”

— Kai Bird

49. “He worked for Rockefeller?” Oppenheimer said, puffing on his pipe. And then lowering his voice, he quipped, “I, too, have taken money for doing harm.”

— Kai Bird

50. “It is easy for a famous scientist to have lots of students doing the dirty work for him,” said one colleague. “But Opje helps people with their problems and then gives them the credit.”

— Kai Bird