Oppenheimer (2023) Best Movie Quotes

Starring: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Dane DeHaan, Jack Quaid, Matthew Modine, Alden Ehrenreich, Kenneth Branagh, David Dastmalchian, Jason Clark, Gary Oldman, Olivia Thirlby

OUR RATING: ★★★★★

Story:

Historical bio-drama written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Oppenheimer (2023) centers on theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), who contributed to the Manhattan Project, the quest to build a nuclear bomb during World War II, and his contributions that led to the creation of the atomic bomb.

Read the movie review here.

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Best Quotes

“Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was changed to a rock and tortured for eternity.”

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Members of the security board, the so-called derogatory information in your indictment of me cannot be fairly understood, except in the context of my life and my work.

Lewis Strauss: [referring to Oppenheimer] Who would want to justify their whole life?

Senate Aide: Senator Thurmond asked me to say not to feel that you’re on trial.
Lewis Strauss: Oh, funny, I didn’t till you just said that.

Senate Aide: [to Strauss] When they bring up Oppenheimer, you answer honestly. No senator can deny you did your duty. It’ll be uncomfortable. Who’d want to justify their whole life?

J. Robert Oppenheimer: [referring to his time studying in Cambridge] I was homesick, emotionally immature, troubled by visions of a hidden universe. Useless in the lab.

Niels Bohr: Quantum physics is not a step forward, it is a new way to understand reality. Einstein’s opened the door, now we are peering through, seeing a world inside our world. A world of energy and paradox that not everyone can accept.

Patrick Blackett: Niels, meet J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Niels Bohr: What’s the “J” stand for?
Patrick Blackett: Nothing, apparently.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: I heard you give the same lecture…
Niels Bohr: At Harvard, yes. And you asked the same question. Why ask again?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Hadn’t liked your answer.
Niels Bohr: Did you like it better yesterday?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: A lot.

'You can lift the stone without being ready for the snake that's revealed.' - Niels Bohr (Oppenheimer) Share on X

Niels Bohr: Algebra’s like sheet music. The important thing isn’t, “Can you read music?” It’s, “Can you hear it?” Can you hear the music, Robert?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Yes, I can.

Lewis Strauss: I’m not trained in physics or anything else. I’m a self-made man.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Ah. I can relate to that.
Lewis Strauss: Really?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Yes, my father was one.

Lewis Strauss: You know, I’ve always wondered why you didn’t involve him in the Manhattan Project. Greatest scientific mind of our time.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Of his time. Einstein published his Theory of Relativity more than forty years ago now. But never embraced the quantum world it revealed.
Lewis Strauss: “God doesn’t play dice.”
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Precisely.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: You never thought of studying physics formally, Mr. Strauss?
Lewis Strauss: Well, I had offers, but I chose to sell shoes.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Lewis Strauss was once a lowly shoe salesman.
Lewis Strauss: No, just a shoe salesman.

Isidor Rabi: [to Oppenheimer] You get any skinnier, we’re going to lose you between the seat cushions.

Isidor Rabi: You learned enough Dutch in six weeks to give a lecture on quantum mechanics?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Wanted to challenge myself.
Isidor Rabi: Quantum physics wasn’t challenging enough.

Isidor Rabi: Dutch in six weeks, but you never learned Yiddish?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: They don’t speak it so much my side of the park.
Isidor Rabi: Screw you.

Isidor Rabi: Ever get the feeling our kind isn’t entirely welcome here?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Physicists?
Isidor Rabi: Funny.

'You're an American Prometheus. The man who gave them the power to destroy themselves.' - Niels Bohr (Oppenheimer) Share on X

Werner Heisenberg: One might be led to the presumption that behind the quantum world, there still hides a real world in which causality holds, but such speculation seem to us, to say it explicitly, fruitless.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: I’m teaching something no one here has dreamt of. But once people start hearing what you can do with it…
Ernest Lawrence: There’s no going back.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: What do you know about quantum mechanics?
Rossi Lomanitz: I have a grasp on the basics.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Then you’re doing it wrong.

Haakon Chevalier: Do stars die?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Well, if they do, they’d cool, then collapse. In fact, the bigger the star, the more violent its demise. The gravity gets so concentrated it swallows everything. Everything, even light.
Haakon Chevalier: Can that really happen?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: The math says it can.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Well, I’m committed to thinking freely about how to improve our world. Why limit yourself to one dogma?
Jean Tatlock: You’re a physicist, you pick and choose rules? Or do you use the discipline to channel your energies into progress?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: I like a little wiggle room. Do you always tow the party line?
Jean Tatlock: I like my wiggle room too.

Jean Tatlock: [after Oppenheimer tells the story of trying to poison his tutor] You just needed to get laid.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Took my analyst two years, and I don’t think they ever put it that succinctly.

Jean Tatlock: You have everyone convinced you’re more complicated than you actually are.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: We’re all simple souls, I guess.
Jean Tatlock: I’m not.

'You don't get to commit the sin, and then have us all feel sorry for you that it had consequences.' - Kitty Oppenheimer Share on X

Frank Oppenheimer: I won’t live my life afraid to make a mistake.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: You’re happy, I’m happy.
Frank Oppenheimer: So then I’m happy you’re happy that I’m happy.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: When I was a kid, I thought if I could find a way to combine physics and New Mexico, my life would be perfect.

Ernest Lawrence: [referring to the news of splitting of the uranium nucleus] You’re thinking what I’m thinking.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: You, me, and every other physicist around the world who’s seen the news.
Luis Alvarez: What? What are we all thinking?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: A bomb, Alvarez. A bomb.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: So, you’re a biologist.
Kitty Oppenheimer: Well, somehow I have graduated to housewife.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: [trying to explain quantum mechanics] Our bodies, all of it. It’s mostly empty space. Groupings of tiny energy waves bound together.
Kitty Oppenheimer: By what?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Forces of attraction strong enough to convince us that matter is solid. Stop my body passing through yours.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: You’re married to Dr. Harrison.
Kitty Oppenheimer: Not very.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: There is someone that I feel…
Kitty Oppenheimer: Does she feel the same way?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Sometimes. Not enough.

Jean Tatlock: [after Oppenheimer’s told her he’s getting married to Kitty] You idiot. This is your community. You think the rules don’t apply to the golden boy?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Brilliance makes up for a lot.
Jean Tatlock: Don’t alienate the only people in the world that understand what you do. One day you might need them.

Ernest Lawrence: What are you doing?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: It’s a trade union.
Ernest Lawrence: Filled with Communists.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: So? I haven’t joined the Party.

'They won't fear it until they understand it. And they won't understand it until they've used it.' - J. Robert Oppenheimer Share on X

J. Robert Oppenheimer: We’ve all heard about Einstein and Szilard’s letter to Roosevelt warning him the Germans could make a bomb. And I know what it means for the Nazis to have a bomb.
Ernest Lawrence: Oh, and I don’t?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: It’s not your people they’re herding into camps. It’s mine.

Ernest Lawrence: The next time you’re coming home from a meeting, why don’t you take a look in the rearview mirror? Listen to the sounds on your phone line and stop being so goddamn naive.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Why would they care what I do?
Ernest Lawrence: Because you’re not just self-important, you’re actually important.

Lewis Strauss: Robert didn’t take care not to upset the power brokers in Washington. His opinions on the atom became definitive, and he wasn’t always patient with us mere mortals.

'Genius is no guarantee of wisdom.' - Lewis Strauss (Oppenheimer) Share on X

Lewis Strauss: How could this man who saw so much be so blind?

J. Robert Oppenheimer: We’re awful people. Selfish, awful people. Forget I asked.
Haakon Chevalier: Selfish, awful people, they don’t know they’re selfish and awful.

Haakon Chevalier: Robert, you see beyond the world we live in. There is a price to be paid for that.

Kitty Oppenheimer: Everything’s changing, Robert.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Having a child was always going to change…
Kitty Oppenheimer: No, the world, it’s pivoting in some new direction. It’s reforming. This is your moment.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Well, if that’s how you treat Lieutenant Colonel, I’d hate to see how you treat a humble physicist.
Leslie Groves: Ah, if I ever meet one, I’ll let you know.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Ouch.

Leslie Groves: You’re a dilettante, a womanizer, a suspected Communist.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: I’m a New Deal Democrat.
Leslie Groves: I said “suspected”. Unstable, theatrical, egotistical, neurotic.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Nothing good, no? Not even “he’s brilliant, but…”
Leslie Groves: Well, brilliance is taken for granted in your circle. So, no.

'Amateurs seek the sun. Get eaten. Power stays in the shadows.' - Lewis Strauss (Oppenheimer) Share on X

J. Robert Oppenheimer: You don’t take much on trust.
Leslie Groves: I don’t take anything on trust.

Leslie Groves: Why don’t you have a Nobel Prize?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Why aren’t you a general?
Leslie Groves: They’re making me one for this.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Perhaps I’ll have the same luck.
Leslie Groves: A Nobel Prize for making a bomb?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Alfred Nobel invented dynamite.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Our nation’s best scientists working together. Right now, they’re scattered.
Leslie Groves: Which gives us compartmentalization.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: All minds have to see the whole task to contribute efficiently. Poor security may cost us the race. Inefficiency will. The Germans know more than us anyway.
Leslie Groves: The Russians don’t.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Remind me, who are we at war with?

See more Oppenheimer Quotes

Leslie Groves: You don’t get to say “no” to me.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: It’s my job to say “no” to you when you’re wrong.
Leslie Groves: So you have the job now?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: I’m considering it.
Leslie Groves: I’m starting to see where you got your reputation.

Leslie Groves: My favorite response, “Oppenheimer couldn’t run a hamburger stand.”
J. Robert Oppenheimer: I couldn’t. But I can run the Manhattan Project. There’s a way to balance these things.

Kenneth Bainbridge: [as Oppenheimer is recruiting the scientists] I’m not a soldier, Oppie.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: [referring to Groves] A soldier? He’s a general. I’ve got all the soldier I need.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: [referring to the scientists] What can I tell them?
Leslie Groves: As much as you like, until you feel my boot on your balls.

Edward Condon: Why would we go to the middle of nowhere for who knows how long?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: For a year, or two. Or three.

Edward Condon: Why would you think I’d do that?
Leslie Groves: Why? Why? How about because this is the most important f***ing thing to ever happen in the history of the world. How about that?

'Is anyone ever going to tell the truth about what's happening here?' - J. Robert Oppenheimer Share on X

J. Robert Oppenheimer: This is a national emergency. I’ve got some skeletons, they put me in charge. They need us.
Concerned Scientist: Until they don’t.

Isidor Rabi: Robert, you’re the great improviser, but this, you can’t do in your head.

Isidor Rabi: I’m not coming here, Robert.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Why not?
Isidor Rabi: You drop a bomb and it falls on the just and the unjust. I don’t wish the culmination of three centuries of physics to be a weapon of mass destruction.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Izzy. I don’t know if we can be trusted with such a weapon. But I know the Nazis can’t. We have no choice.

Isidor Rabi: Take off that ridiculous uniform. You’re a scientist.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Groves is insisting we join.
Isidor Rabi: Tell Groves to go s**t in his hat. They need us for who we are. So be yourself. Only better.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: When we detonate an atomic device, we might start a chain reaction that destroys the world.
Albert Einstein: So here we are, hmm? Lost in your quantum world of probabilities, and needing certainty.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Can you run the calculations yourself?
Albert Einstein: About the only thing you and I have in common is a disdain for mathematics.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: And if the truth is catastrophic?
Albert Einstein: Then you stop. And you share your findings with the Nazis. So neither side destroys the world.

Hans Bethe: Till they actually detonate one of these things, the best assurance you’re going to get is this. Near zero.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Theory will take you only so far.

'Now I am become Death. The Destroyer of Worlds.' - J. Robert Oppenheimer Share on X

Lewis Strauss: You don’t know scientists like I do, Counselor. They resent anyone who questions their judgment, especially if you’re not one of them.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: How long have you been British?
Klaus Fuchs: Since Hitler told me I wasn’t German.

Lilli Hornig: I tried Personnel. They asked if I could type.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Can you?
Lilli Hornig: Harvard forgot to teach that on the graduate chemistry course.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: You didn’t hire me despite my left-wing past. You hired me because of it. So you could control me.
Leslie Groves: Well, I’m not that subtle. I’m just a humble soldier.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: You’re neither humble, nor just a soldier. You studied engineering at MIT.
Leslie Groves: Guilty as charged.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Well, now we understand each other, perhaps you can get me my security clearance so I can perform this miracle for you.

Lloyd Garrison: [referring to Oppenheimer] In your opinion, would he ever consciously commit a disloyal act?
Leslie Groves: I would be amazed if he did.
Lloyd Garrison: So you had complete confidence in his integrity.
Leslie Groves: At Los Alamos, yes, which is where I really knew him.

Roger Robb: [to Groves] Well, then there’s only really one question I need answered here today. In light of the current AEC guidelines, would you clear Dr. Oppenheimer today?

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Look, I’ve had a lot of secrets in my head for a long time. Doesn’t matter who I associate with. I don’t talk about those secrets.

Jean Tatlock: You drop in and out of my life, and you don’t have to tell me why. Now that’s power.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Not that I enjoy. I’d rather be here for you as you need.
Jean Tatlock: But you have other priorities now.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: I have a wife and child.
Jean Tatlock: That’s not what either of us is talking about.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: [referring to him being unfaithful with Jean] Kitty, I didn’t say anything that I hadn’t already told you.
Kitty Oppenheimer: Today you said it to history, didn’t you?

J. Robert Oppenheimer: I was under oath.
Kitty Oppenheimer: Well, you were under an oath for me when you went to see Jean. You know, you sit there, day after day, letting them pick our lives to pieces. Why won’t you fight?

Leslie Groves: You’re trying to protect your friend. Who’s protecting you?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Well, you could.
Leslie Groves: If you gave me the name.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: If you order me to, I’ll do it.
Leslie Groves: That’s a mistake, Robert. You need to volunteer this name.

Niels Bohr: Is it big enough?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: To end the war?
Niels Bohr: To end all war.

Niels Bohr: I am not here to help, Robert. I knew you could do this without me.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Then why did you come?
Niels Bohr: To talk about after. The power you’re about to reveal will forever outlive the Nazis. And the world is not prepared.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: “You could lift the stone without being ready for the snake that’s revealed.”

Niels Bohr: [to Oppenheimer] We have to make the politicians understand, this isn’t a new weapon. It’s a new world. I’ll be out there doing what I can. But you, you’re an American Prometheus. The man who gave them the power to destroy themselves. And they’ll respect that. And your work really begins.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: [after Jean’s death] We were together. She said she needed me. I told her I wouldn’t. I told her I couldn’t. No, it was me.
Kitty Oppenheimer: You don’t get to commit the sin and then have us all feel sorry for you that it had consequences. You pull yourself together. You know, people here depend on you.

Lilli Hornig: Bob, I’m not quitting my job because plutonium is radioactive.
Robert Serber: We just don’t know what it might do to the female reproductive system.
Lilli Hornig: Your reproductive system is more exposed than mine, presumably.

Edward Teller: You’re a politician now, Robert. You’ve left physics behind many, many years ago.

Isidor Rabi: An H-bomb is a thousand times the power of an A-bomb. Its only intended target would be the largest cities. It’s a weapon of mass genocide.

Isidor Rabi: Oppie, I don’t think you want to go up against Strauss.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: If we both speak, they listen to me.
Isidor Rabi: When you speak, they hear a prophet. When Strauss speaks, they hear themselves.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: They’ll listen to a prophet.
Isidor Rabi: A prophet can’t be wrong. Not once.

Lilli Hornig: It’s no longer the enemy who are the greatest threat to mankind, it’s our work.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: We can end this war.
Philip Morrison: But how do we justify using this weapon on human beings?

J. Robert Oppenheimer: We’re theorists, yes? We imagine a future and our imaginings horrify us. But they won’t fear it until they understand it. And they won’t understand it until they’ve used it. When the world learns the terrible secret of Los Alamos, our work here will ensure a peace mankind has never seen. A peace based on the kind of international cooperation that Roosevelt always envisaged.

Leslie Groves: What do we call the test?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: “Batter my heart, three-person’d god.”
Leslie Groves: What?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Trinity.

Roger Robb: You brought a known former Communist onto America’s most secret and important defense project.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: I knew my brother could be trusted. Absolutely.
Roger Robb: And you felt your judgment was sound on who on the team could be trusted?

Leslie Groves: [after the test explosion] Well, I hope you learned something.
Frank Oppenheimer: Yeah, we learned we’re going to need to be a lot further away.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Just because we’re building it, doesn’t mean we get to decide how it’s used.
Leo Szilard: History will judge us, Robert.

Leo Szilard: Germany’s defeated. Japan’s not going to hold out alone.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: How could you know that? You got us into this. You and Einstein with your letter to Roosevelt saying we could build a bomb.
Leo Szilard: Against Germany.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: That’s not how weapons manufacture works, Szilard.

Leo Szilard: [to Oppenheimer] You’re the great salesman of science. You can convince anyone of anything. Even yourself.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Don’t underestimate the psychological impact of a of an atomic explosion. A pillar of fire ten thousand feet tall. Deadly neutron effects for a mile, in all directions, from one single device. Dropped from a barely noticed B-29, the atomic bomb will be a terrible revelation of divine power.

Henry Stimson: [referring to their targets for the atomic bomb] We have a list of twelve cities to choose from. Sorry, eleven. I’ve taken Kyoto off the list due to its cultural significance to the Japanese people. Also, my wife and I honeymooned there. It’s a magnificent city.

Henry Stimson: Many lives will be lost, American and Japanese. The use of the atomic bomb on Japanese cities will save lives.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: If we retain moral advantage.
Henry Stimson: How so?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Well, if we use this weapon without informing our allies, they’ll see it as a threat. And we’ll be in an arms race.

Leslie Groves: The Manhattan Project has been plagued from the start by certain scientists of doubtful discretion and uncertain loyalty. One of them just tried to meet with the president. Now, we need these men, but as soon as it’s practical, we should sever any such scientists from the program.

Hans Bethe: Are those safe distances?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: They’re based on your calculations.
Isidor Rabi: Time to stand behind your science, Hans. Literally.

Kitty Oppenheimer: [referring to the test] It’s happening, isn’t it?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: I’ll send a message. If it’s gone our way, take in the sheets.

Leslie Groves: Are we saying there’s a chance that when we push that button, we destroy the world?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Nothing in our research over three years supports that conclusion. Except as the most remote possibility.
Leslie Groves: How remote?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Chances are near zero.
Leslie Groves: Near zero?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: What do you want from theory alone?
Leslie Groves: Zero would be nice.

Leslie Groves: Robert. Try not to blow up the world.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Get a message to Kitty.
Robert Serber: We can’t say anything.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Tell her to take in the sheets.

Leslie Groves: Robert, we’ve given them an ace, it’s for them to play the hand.

Edward Teller: Would the Japanese surrender if they knew what was coming?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: I don’t know.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: The fact that we built this bomb does not give us any more right or responsibility to decide how it’s used than anyone else.
Edward Teller: But we’re the only people who know about it.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Once it’s used, nuclear war, perhaps all war, becomes unthinkable.
Edward Teller: Until somebody builds a bigger bomb.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: [after the atomic bomb has been used on Japan] The world will remember this day.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: I’m so proud. So proud of what you have accomplished. I just wish we had it in time to use against the Germans.

Harry Truman: How does it feel to be the most famous man in the world? You helped save a lot of American lives. What we did at Hiroshima was a…
J. Robert Oppenheimer: And Nagasaki.
Harry Truman: Well, obviously. Your invention let us bring our boys home.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Well, it was hardly my invention.
Harry Truman: It was you on the cover of Time.

Harry Truman: I hear you’re leaving Los Alamos. What should we do with it?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Give it back to the Indians.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Mr. President, I feel that I have blood on my hands.
Harry Truman: You think anyone in Hiroshima or Nagasaki gives a s**t who built the bomb? They care who dropped it. I did. Hiroshima isn’t about you.

Harry Truman: [Oppenheimer overhears as he leaves the Oval Office] Don’t let that crybaby back in here.

Lewis Strauss: Robert saw that hand-wringing got him nowhere. By the time I’d met him, he’d fully embraced his “father of the bomb” reputation. Used his profile to influence policy.

Roger Robb: Doctor, in the years following the war, would you say that you exerted a great influence on the atomic policies of the USA?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: I think great would be an overstatement.

Lewis Strauss: After the truth about Fuchs came out, the FBI stepped up surveillance on him. He knew his phone was tapped, he was followed everywhere, his trash picked through. But never stopped speaking his mind.
Senate Aide: A man of conviction.
Lewis Strauss: And maybe he thought fame could actually protect him.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: America and Russia may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.

Lewis Strauss: You see them in there, right? I’ve been working my whole life to get here. Cabinet of the United States of America. Now, in front of the entire country, they’re going to put me back in my place. A lowly shoe salesman.

Edward Teller: [after Oppenheimer refuses to back his hydrogen bomb research] J. Robert Oppenheimer. Sphinx-like guru of the atom. Nobody knows what you believe. Do you?

J. Robert Oppenheimer: I hope that in years to come you will look back on your work here with pride. But today, that pride must be tempered with a profound concern. If atomic weapons are to be added to the arsenals of a warring world, then the day will come when people will curse the name of Los Alamos.

Senate Aide: You sat here and let me tell you how it’s done, but you’ve been far ahead all along.
Lewis Strauss: Survival in Washington is about knowing how to get things done.
Senate Aide: Right. What was it you said about Borden? “Why get caught holding the knife yourself?” I’m beginning to think Borden was holding the knife for you.

Lloyd Garrison: Did I say something funny?
Kitty Oppenheimer: Just “Borden, Borden, Borden”, when we all know that it’s Strauss.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Lewis brought me to Princeton, Kitty.
Kitty Oppenheimer: And then you humiliated him in front of Congress.

Kitty Oppenheimer: You know, the truly vindictive, patient as saints.
Lloyd Garrison: Strauss has been perfectly clear that he is neutral.
Kitty Oppenheimer: Wake up. It is Strauss. It’s always been Strauss, and you know it. Why won’t you fight him?

Lewis Strauss: No trial. You can’t give Oppenheimer a platform. You can’t martyr him. We need a systematic destruction of Oppenheimer’s credibility so he can never again speak on matters of national security.
William Borden: Then what?
Lewis Strauss: A shabby little room, far from the limelight.

Lewis Strauss: A closed hearing. No audience. No reporters. No burden of proof.
Kenneth Nichols: No burden of proof?
Lewis Strauss: We’re not convicting. We’re just denying.

Lewis Strauss: What is it you said? “This is just how the game is played.”
Senate Aide: Well, forgive my naivete.
Lewis Strauss: Amateurs seek the sun. Get eaten. Power stays in the shadows.
Senate Aide: But, sir, you’re out of the shadows now.
Lewis Strauss: Yeah, that’s why this has to work.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Gentlemen, you have my words. If you say they’re from a transcript, then I’ll accept it. I’ve already explained I made up a cock-and-bull story.
Roger Robb: But why would anyone make up such an elaborate story?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Because I was an idiot.

Isidor Rabi: Strauss told him that you and Ruth Tolman have been having an affair for years. The whole time you lived with them in Pasadena. He convinced Lawrence that Richard died of a broken heart.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: That’s absurd.
Isidor Rabi: What part?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: The broken heart. Richard never found out.

Isidor Rabi: Why go through all this against a man who has accomplished what Dr. Oppenheimer has? Look at his record. We have an A-bomb and a whole series of it. We have a whole series of Super bombs. What more do you want? Mermaids?

Vannevar Bush: It appears to most scientists around this country that Robert Oppenheimer is now being pilloried and put through an ordeal because he expressed his honest opinions.
Ward Evans: Dr. Bush, I thought I was performing a service to my country when hearing this case.
Vannevar Bush: No board in this country should sit in judgment of a man because he expressed strong opinions. If you want to try that case, you should try me. Excuse me, gentlemen, if I become stirred, but I am.

Edward Teller: I’ve always assumed, and still assume, that he’s loyal to the United States. I believe this. And I shall believe it until I see very conclusive proof to the opposite.
Roger Robb: Do you or do you not believe that Dr. Oppenheimer is a security risk?
Edward Teller: In a great number of cases, I have seen Dr. Oppenheimer act in a way which was to me exceedingly hard to understand. I thoroughly disagreed with him in numerous issues, and his actions frankly appeared to me confused and complicated. To this extent, I feel, I want to see the vital interest of this country in hands which I understand better and therefore trust more.

Kitty Oppenheimer: [to Oppenheimer, referring to Teller] You shook his f***ing hand? Oh, I would have spit in his face.
Lloyd Garrison: I’m not sure the board would have appreciated that.
Kitty Oppenheimer: Is it not gentlemanly enough for you? Well, I think you’re all being too goddamn gentlemanly.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Only a fool or an adolescent presumes to know someone else’s relationship, and you’re neither, Lloyd. Kitty and I, we’re grown-ups. We’ve walked through fire together. She’ll do fine.

Kitty Oppenheimer: I thought that the Communist Party of the United States was concerned with our domestic problems. I now no longer believe this. I believe the whole thing’s linked together and spread all over the world, and I have believed this since I left the Party sixteen years ago.
Roger Robb: But…
Kitty Oppenheimer: Seventeen years ago. My mistake.
Roger Robb: But you said…
Kitty Oppenheimer: Sorry, eighteen. Eighteen years ago.

Roger Robb: Are there two types of Communists? Intellectual Communists and your plain old regular Commie?
Kitty Oppenheimer: Well, I couldn’t answer that one.
Ward Evans: I couldn’t either.

Joe Volpe: It’s a kangaroo court with a predetermined outcome. Why put yourself through more of it?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: I have my reasons.

Albert Einstein: I left my country never to return. You served your country well. If this is the reward she offers you, then perhaps you should turn your back on her.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Dammit, I happen to love this country.
Albert Einstein: Then tell them to go to hell.

Lewis Strauss: Why would Hill come here to tear me down? What’s his angle?
Senate Aide: Do people need a reason to do the right thing? As he sees it.
Lewis Strauss: I told you, Oppenheimer poisoned the scientists against me, right from that first meeting. I don’t know what Oppenheimer said to him that day, but Einstein wouldn’t even meet my eye.

Lewis Strauss: Oppenheimer knows how to manipulate his own. And at Los Alamos, he preyed on the naivete of scientists who thought they’d get a say in how we used their work, but don’t ever think he was that naive himself.

Lewis Strauss: Oppenheimer wanted to own the atomic bomb. He wanted to be the man who moved the Earth. He talks about putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle. Well, I’m here to tell you that I know J. Robert Oppenheimer, and if he could do it all over, he’d do it all the same. You know he’s never once said that he regrets Hiroshima? He’d do it all over. Why? Because it made him the most important man who ever lived.

Lewis Strauss: It was all part of his plan. He wanted the glorious, insincere guilt of the self-important to wear like a f***ing crown. Say, “No, we cannot go down this road,” even as he knew we’d have to.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: I set forth our arguments against dropping it, but I did not endorse them.
Roger Robb: You mean after working night and day for three years building the bomb, you then argued against the use of it?

Gordon Gray: Dr. Oppenheimer, when did your strong moral convictions develop with respect to the hydrogen bomb?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: When it became clear to me that we would tend to use any weapon we had.

Lewis Strauss: J. Robert Oppenheimer, the martyr. I gave him exactly what he wanted. To be remembered for Trinity, not Hiroshima, not Nagasaki. He should be thanking me.
Senate Aide: Well, he’s not.

Lewis Strauss: Do we still have enough votes, or is the crowning moment of my career about to become the most public humiliation of my life?
Senate Aide: Full Senate’s about to vote. You’ll scrape through.
Lewis Strauss: Great, then gather the f***ing press.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: [to Kitty, after his security clearance is revoked] Don’t take in the sheets.

Lewis Strauss: [referring to being denied a position into Senate] Who were the holdouts?
Senate Aide: There were three, led by the junior senator from Massachusetts. Young guy trying to make a name for himself, didn’t like what you did to Oppenheimer.
Lewis Strauss: What’s his name?
Senate Aide: Kennedy. John F. Kennedy.

Kitty Oppenheimer: Did you think that if you let them tar and feather you, that the world would forgive you? It won’t.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: We’ll see.

Lewis Strauss: They don’t want me in the Cabinet room? Well, that’s fine. Maybe they should just invite Oppenheimer instead.
Senate Aide: Maybe they will.
Lewis Strauss: I told you, he turned the scientists against me one by one, starting with Einstein. I told you about Einstein. I saw him by the pond.
Senate Aide: You did. But you know, sir, since nobody really knows what they said to each other that day, is it possible they didn’t talk about you at all? Is it possible they spoke about something more important?

'When they've punished you enough, they'll serve you salmon and potato salad. Make speeches, give you a medal. Pat you on the back, tell you all is forgiven. Just remember, it won't be for you. It'll be for them.' - Albert Einstein Share on X

Albert Einstein: The man of the moment. You once held a reception for me. In Berkeley. You gave me an award. Hmm? You all thought that I had lost the ability to understand what I’d started. So the award really wasn’t for me, it was for all of you, hmm? Now it’s your turn to deal with the consequences of your achievement. And one day, when they’ve punished you enough, they’ll serve you salmon and potato salad. Make speeches, give you a medal. Pat you on the back, tell you all is forgiven. Just remember, it won’t be for you. It’ll be for them.

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Albert. When I came to you with those calculations, we thought we might start a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world.
Albert Einstein: I remember it well. What of it?
J. Robert Oppenheimer: I believe we did.