3 Quotes by Algis Valiunas

A millenarian fire burned in Oppenheimer’s spirit, fueled by his pride as a world-historical individual, by his fear that the natural force he loosed upon the world would escape all human control, and by a pure-hearted longing to ensure that his discovery of the devastation latent in the elemental substance of the world would serve concord rather than the ultimate discord, perpetual peace rather than permanent self-destruction.

Oppenheimer’s theorizing was so startlingly original — so far in advance of the corroborating observations and so far off the beaten track of astrophysical research — that his colleagues’ ignorance cost him the recognition he deserved.

Perhaps no theoretical man can be equal to such a burden: to feel knowledge as power when one’s mind reshapes the world irrevocably, to see the light of truth as the agent of some dark majesty, is not grace but ordeal.