Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
| NUMBER: | 123 |
| AUTHOR: | Bhagavad Gita |
| QUOTATION: | If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky, that would be like the splendour of the Mighty One. I am mighty, world-destroying Time … |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Bhagavad Gita. Bhagavad Gita, trans. Swami Nikhilananda, chapter 11, sections 12 and 32, pp. 256, 261 (1944). A variation of this translation flashed through the mind of J. Robert Oppenheimer as he stood in the control room at the explosion of the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico, July 16, 1945: “If the radiance of a thousand suns / were to burst into the sky / that would be like / the splendor of the Mighty One and I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.”—Current Biography Yearbook, 1964, p. 331. |
| SUBJECTS: | Bombs and bombing |