Making of the Atomic Bomb Quotes.

1. "We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes the world is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics. Even if we know every rule, however . . . what we really can explain in terms of those rules is very limited, because almost all situations are so enormously complicated that we cannot follow the plays of the game using the rules, much less tell what is going to happen next. We must, therefore, limit ourselves to the more basic question of the rules of the game. If we know the rules, we consider that we understand the world."
- Richard Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb

2. "British experimenters used Bank of England sealing wax to make glass tubes airtight."
- Richard Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb

3. "When he thundered up the steep staircase [of the institute], two steps at a time, there were few of us younger ones that could keep pace with him. The peace of the library was often broken by a brisk game of pingpong, and I don’t remember ever beating Bohr at that game."
- Richard Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb

4. "The physics faculty of the University of Berlin included Nobel laureates Albert Einstein, Max Planck and Max von Laue,"
- Richard Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb

5. "Science grew out of the craft tradition"
- Richard Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb

6. "informal system of mastery and apprenticeship over which was laid the more recent system of the European graduate school."
- Richard Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb

7. "He even found time on the day of the occupation to worry about the large gold Nobel Prize medals that Max von Laue and James Franck had given him for safekeeping.1290 Exporting gold from Germany was a serious criminal offense and their names were engraved on the medals.1291, 1292 George de Hevesy devised an effective solution—literally: he dissolved the medals separately in acid. As solutions of black liquid in unmarked jars they sat out the war innocently on a laboratory shelf."
- Richard Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb

8. "Out of the prospering but vulnerable Hungarian Jewish middle class came no fewer than seven of the twentieth century’s most exceptional scientists: in order of birth, Theodor von Kármán, George de Hevesy, Michael Polanyi, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann and Edward Teller."
- Richard Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb

9. "there are not many horrors as efficient for the generation of deep anger and terrible lifelong insecurity as the inability of a father to protect his child."
- Richard Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb

10. "collected minerals and at ten years of age wrote poems but still played with blocks."
- Richard Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb