My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.
-- Robert Oppenheimer (Skinny Superhero paragraph 15)

Importance: Oppenheimer is describing himself as a child and says that he was a “repulsively good little boy.” He obviously worked hard to obtain his degree and to reach his place as a professor at Berkeley. Later, he leads the program to build the atomic bomb and is horrified by the devastation of his creation.

I feel as if I had caught an elephant by its tail, without meaning to,' Frisch wrote to his mother. 'And now I don't know what to do with it.
-- Otto Frisch (The U Business paragraph 20)

Importance: Frisch was a physicist and Lise Meitner's nephew. The two discussed Otto Hahn's discovery related to the splitting of atoms and came up with the science that made the atomic bomb possible. Frisch realized that the possibility now existed to create an...