Josh Hartnett credited as playing...
Ernest Lawrence
- J. Robert Oppenheimer: Why would they care what I do?
- Ernest Lawrence: Because you're not just self-important, you're actually important.
- Ernest Lawrence: [Greeting General Groves] Leslie.
- Leslie Groves: Dr. Lawrence, I'd like to remind you what we talked about in Berkeley.
- Ernest Lawrence: Compartmentalization, I understand completely
- Ernest Lawrence: [Addressing a group of physicists and scientists at Los Alamos] I am here to update you on our progress and solicit your input. To do so, I am going to have to share a few things that General Groves told me not to.
- Ernest Lawrence: [to General Groves] Sorry, General, I said I understood, not that I agreed.
- Ernest Lawrence: [after Lawrence breaks up a meeting of the F.A.E.C.T. in the lab] They won't let me bring you onto the project because of this shit. They won't even let me tell you what the project is.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer: Oh, I know what the project is.
- Ernest Lawrence: Oh, really?
- J. Robert Oppenheimer: We've all heard about Einstein and Szilard's letter to Roosevelt warning him that Germans could make a bomb. And I know what it means for the Nazis to have a bomb.
- Ernest Lawrence: And I don't?
- J. Robert Oppenheimer: It's not your people they're herding into camps. It's mine.
- Ernest Lawrence: You think that I tell them about your politics. The next time you're coming home from a meeting, why don't you take a look in the rear view mirror, listen to the sounds on your phone line and stop being so goddam naïve.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer: Why would they care what I do?
- Ernest Lawrence: Because you're not just self-important. You're actually important.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer: Okay, I get it.
- Ernest Lawrence: If you could just be a little more...
- J. Robert Oppenheimer: Pragmatic. I'll talk to Lomanitz, I'll talk to the others, you don't have to worry. It's done.
- Ernest Lawrence: Then welcome to the war.
- Luis Alvarez: [Reproducing splitting the atom, verifying nuclear fission and pointing at the oscilloscope] Look. These fission pulses, they're massive. I've seen 30 of these in the past 10 minutes.
- Ernest Lawrence: Theory will take you only so far.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer: During the process, extra neutrons boil off. Which be used to split other uranium atoms...
- Ernest Lawrence: A chain reaction. You're thinking what I'm thinking.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer: You, me and every physicist around the world who's seen the news.
- Luis Alvarez: [Baffled] What? What are we all thinking?
- J. Robert Oppenheimer: A bomb, Alvarez. A bomb.