“When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
"Science has nothing to be ashamed of even in the ruins
of Nagasaki. The shame is theirs who appeal to other values than the human
imaginative values which science has evolved. The shame is ours if we do not
make science part of our world..."
-
Jacob Bronowski
"The most striking impression was that of an overwhelming
bright light. I had seen under similar conditions the explosion of a large
amount—100 tons—of normal explosives in the April test, and I was flabbergasted
by the new spectacle. We saw the whole sky flash with unbelievable brightness in
spite of the very dark glasses we wore. Our eyes were accommodated to darkness,
and thus even if the sudden light had been only normal daylight it would have
appeared to us much brighter than usual, but we know from measurements that the
flash of the bomb was many times brighter than the sun. In a fraction of a
second, at our distance, one received enough light to produce a sunburn. I was
near Fermi at the time of the explosion, but I do not remember what we said, if
anything. I believe that for a moment I thought the explosion might set fire to
the atmosphere and thus finish the earth, even though I knew that this was not
possible."
- Emilo
Segre
"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 values."
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?documentdate=1945-05-09&documentid=35&studycollectionid=abomb&pagenumber=1
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?pagenumber=2&documentdate=1945-06-18&documentid=21&studycollectionid=abomb
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?pagenumber=2&documentdate=1945-06-18&documentid=21&studycollectionid=abomb
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