Quotes from Kai Bird

He bore a certain "hubris," she thought, of the kind that carries with it the seeds of its own destruction. Everything about Robert's personality— from his abrupt, jerky way of walking to such little things as the making of a salad dressing—displayed, she thought, "a great need to declare his preeminence.

Reading it in the evening by flashlight during his walking tour of Corsica, he later claimed to his Berkeley friend Haakon Chevalier, was one of the great experiences of his life. It snapped him out of his depression.

We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.

This the United States will never do; and let me point out that we never had any of this hysterical fear of any nation until atomic weapons appeared upon the scene." Later in his presidency, Eisenhower would feel compelled to rebuke a panel of hawkish advisers, caustically observing, "You can't have this kind of war. There just aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.

his behavior in stormy seas struck some friends as an example of Robert's deeply ingrained arrogance, or perhaps a not very surprising extension of his inner resiliency. He had an irresistible urge to flirt with danger.

But he thought of Einstein as a living patron saint of physics, not a working scientist.

My two great loves are physics and New Mexico. It's a pity they can't be combined.

We did have a pretty intense discussion of why it was that we were continuing to make a bomb after the war had been [virtually] won.

Strauss was unfazed by the extraconstitutional nature of things he was doing to undermine Oppenheimer's defense

Robert often displayed a sense of humor. Upon seeing Karl Compton's two-year-old daughter pretending to read a small red book—which just happened to be on the topic of birth control—Robert looked over at the very pregnant Mrs. Compton and quipped, "A little late.

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.

psicoanálisis como vocación».[73] Lo metafísico seguía teniendo prioridad para él.[74] Así, entre 1938 y 1941 sacó tiempo para asistir a los seminarios de Bernfeld, un grupo de estudio que en 1942 dio lugar a la constitución del Instituto y Sociedad Psicoanalítica de San Francisco.

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.

By the nature of their discipline, mathematicians invariably do their best intuitive work in their twenties or early thirties—whereas historians and other social scientists often need years of studious preparation before they became capable of genuinely creative work.

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.

Leo Szilard was frantic. The peripatetic physicist knew time was running out. Atomic bombs would soon be ready, and he expected that they would be used on Japanese cities. Having been the first to urge President Roosevelt to initiate a program to build atomic weapons, he now made repeated attempts to prevent their use.

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.

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.

Every day the Army bused in Pueblo Indian women from the nearby settlement of San Ildefonso to work as housekeepers.

As she sat in the House Committee anteroom waiting to testify, she looked out the window and was startled by the contrast between Capitol Hill's marble government buildings, surrounded by manicured grounds, and the rows of tumbledown houses occupied by the city's Negro population. The children were barefoot and dressed in rags. "They all looked rachitic and most seemed undernourished. All they had to play with was junk they found in the street.

Students felt free to interrupt Oppie with a question. "He generally would answer patiently," Geurjoy said, "unless the question was manifestly stupid, in which event his response was likely to be quite caustic.

Vanquish enemies at arms . . . Gain mastery of the sciences And varied arts . . . You may do all this, but karma's force Alone prevents what is not destined And compels what is to be.

Echoing his discussion of the previous day with Szilard, Oppenheimer said, "If we were to offer to exchange information before the bomb was actually used, our moral position would be greatly strengthened.

He told friends that this ancient Hindu text—"The Lord's Song"—was "the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.