We must expect that these German scientists, once they get here, will — Samuel Goudsmit

"I did all the problems a little different from the rest of the class."

"In short, we knew very little about the German uranium project, and what little we knew we almost invariably interpreted in their favor. In the long run, this was probably all to the good, since it accelerated our own work enormously. But in those days, before the invasion of Europe, we would have given a great deal to know more."

"... I dont like the history of physics, I have always been against the way in which the historians wrote about it in earlier days. Nowadays it is better, someone like Martin Klein, that is real, he brings something new. But the earlier historians always described physics as if it had been done by three and four people and they forgot that these famous people could only do their work because of the many others who also made contributions. ..."

"In my study hangs a fine old horse shoe, which I found in an abandoned Western ghost town. I dont believe in superstitions, but it is supposed to work even for a nonbeliever2. It hasnt so far."

"If only we could get hold of a German atomic physicist, we felt, we could soon find out what the rest of them were up to. To us physicists the problem seemed very simple. Even those of us who were not working on the atom bomb project knew pretty well what was going on over here. No amount of military security could have prevented us from knowing, difficult as it was for the military to understand this. Active scientists engaged in the same general field of research inevitably form a kind of clan; they work closely together and know all about each others specialities and whereabouts. You cant take a group of key scientists from their accustomed haunts and have them disappear in some remote place in New Mexico, together with their families, without their colleagues who are left behind wondering about it and deriving the right conclusions. The same thing, we knew, would be true of the Germans."

"Secrecy, it was impressed upon us at the outset, was imperative, despite the fact that our code name, ALSOS, seemed a give-away, being the Greek translation for Groves. Since General Groves was in complete charge of all Army activities relating to the atom bomb project, the inference did not take too much imagination. To make it even more obvious, the Missions vehicles had license plates bearing the Greek letter Alpha."