Lord, grant that my work increase knowledge and help other men. Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction. Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in Brain be published before the destruction takes place.

Walker Percy
About This Quote

This quote is from a request to the United States Federal Government concerning nuclear weapons. It was written in 1954 by Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, a leading physicist and director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The request was submitted to the Atomic Energy Commission by the Joints Chiefs of Staff, and was actually made under the name of Dr.

R.O. Lawrence. The request could have been written by any one of us who are concerned about this terrible situation, but it was written by a scientist, with an understanding of both science and politics.

It expresses the feelings of many scientists that they are powerless to control what is happening. If they speak out, they will be branded as anti-science or even anti-military. I doubt you have ever heard anyone in either the scientific community or in politics call for atomic weapons to be abolished today, even though most would agree that this is what should happen if possible.

We must look at this situation with hope for change, not despair that it will never come about

Source: Love In The Ruins

Some Similar Quotes
  1. I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst... - Isaac Newton
  2. To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth. - Evelyn Fox Keller
  3. The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists. - Unknown
  4. One has a greater sense of intellectual degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience. - Alice James
  5. If time be judiciously employed, there is time for everything. - George Head
More Quotes By Walker Percy
  1. You can get all A's and still flunk life.
  2. The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o'clock on an ordinary morning: The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His...
  3. If poets often commit suicide, it is not because their poems are bad but because they are good. Whoever heard of a bad poet committing suicide? The reader is only a little better off. The exhilaration of a good poem lasts twenty minutes, an hour...
  4. Lord, grant that my work increase knowledge and help other men. Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction. Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in Brain be published before the destruction takes place.
  5. Whenever I feel bad, I go to the library and read controversial periodicals. Though I do not know whether I am a liberal or a conservative, I am nevertheless enlivened by the hatred which one bears the other. In fact, this hatred strikes me as...
Related Topics