Denise Kiernan · 373 pages
Rating: (19.2K votes)
“They fought to smile through the lines and the mud and the long hours, dancing under the stars and under the watchful eyes of their government, an Orwellian backdrop for a Rockwellian world.”
― Denise Kiernan, quote from The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
“Case in point: On one of their first dates, he brought her a box of Ivory Flakes soap. Who needs flowers? Roses fade, but flaky soap available from the PX lasted months. Having Ivory Flakes was a rarity in itself, and also saved her valuable time—one less line to stand in, only to find that the grocer was out. Again. That was romance, as far as Colleen was concerned. Maybe this guy was a keeper after all.”
― Denise Kiernan, quote from The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
“I hope for some sort of peace—but I fear that machines are ahead of morals by some centuries and when morals catch up perhaps there’ll be no reason for any of it. I hope not. But we are only termites on a planet and maybe when we forge too deeply into the planet there will be a reckoning—who knows?”
― Denise Kiernan, quote from The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
“A dictator decrees,” she later wrote, “a president asks Congress for permission to organize.”
― Denise Kiernan, quote from The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
“The "hillbilly" girls were generating more enriched Tubealloy per run than the PhDs had...The District Engineer understood perfectly. Those girls...had been trained like soldiers. Do what you're told. Don't ask why.”
― Denise Kiernan, quote from The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
“Whether or not you agree with the outcome, the tremendous amount that the Manhattan Project accomplished in such a short amount of time–just under three years–is astonishing. It makes you wonder what other kinds of things could be accomplished with that kind of determination, effort, and financial and political support. What if the kind of money, manpower, and resources that went into the Manhattan Project went into the fight against hunger? Cancer? Homelessness?”
― Denise Kiernan, quote from The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
“The more she thought about it, the more she realized: Oak Ridgers had kept the most amazing secret ever.”
― Denise Kiernan, quote from The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
“On occasion, people who tried to write family members living at Site X by addressing the letters to “Oak Ridge” got those letters returned to sender with a note reading simply: “There is no such place as Oak Ridge, Tennessee.”
― Denise Kiernan, quote from The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
“In 1942, a new secret came to this part of the world. The earth trembled and shook and made way for an unprecedented alliance of military, industrial, and scientific forces, forces that combined to create the most powerful and controversial weapon known to mankind. This weapon released the power present in the great unseen of the time, unleashing the energy of the basic unit of matter known as the atom. Author”
― Denise Kiernan, quote from The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
“She deemed Fermi’s work inconclusive, and in late 1934, she published her views on Fermi’s findings in an article titled “Über Das Element 93” (On Element 93), in which she proposed an idea that seemed unrealistic”
― Denise Kiernan, quote from The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
“seemed to know what was going on, not even the”
― Denise Kiernan, quote from The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
“The most ambitious war project in military history rested squarely on the shoulders of tens of thousands of ordinary people, many of them young women.”
― Denise Kiernan, quote from The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
Denise Kiernan
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“Any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness.”
― Walter Benjamin, quote from Illuminations: Essays and Reflections
“People were supposed to cry at weddings; they just weren't supposed to cry because they suspected that the bride was going to die.”
― Alethea Kontis, quote from Enchanted
“لأن الحب أمر ليس له وجود لأنه لما كانت العلاقة الجنسية أمراً مباحاً قبل الزواج، فإن عاطفة الرجل لا تجد من السدود ما يختزنها، وقلما يكون لها أثر في اختيار الزوجة؛ وللسبب نفسه، أعني تلاحق الشهوة وتنفيذها بغير فاصل من زمن، ليس لديهم ما يبرر أن يجلس الشاب مفكراً في طوية نفسه، في عاطفته التي احتبست في صدره والتي من أجل احتباسها أخذت تُزَين له الحبيب المُشتَهَى، مما يؤدي عادةً إلى الحب العاطفي عند الشباب؛ إن مثل هذا الحب وظهوره مرهون بالمدنية التي أقامت الأخلاق سدودا أمام الشهوة”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Civilization
“You’re the fuckin’ meaning of breathing for me. You’re the reason I get out of bed each day and fuck, if that’s love, I am gonna hang onto it and never let it go.”
― Bella Jewel, quote from Hell's Knights
“I told her that we go to work to provide for our families, attend school functions that our children are involved in, take a few pieces of cake we just baked over to our neighbor next door, drive our children to school in the morning. “No! No!” She said. “How do you worship?” I said we make love to our spouses, smile and greet someone we pass on the street, help our children with their homework, hold open a door for someone behind us. “Worship! I’m asking about worship!” She exclaimed. I asked her exactly what she had in mind. “You know-Rituals!” She insisted. I answered her that we practice those also and that they are a very important part of Muslim worship. I was not trying to frustrate her, but I answered her in this way in order to emphasize Islam’s comprehensive conception of worship.”
― Jeffrey Lang, quote from Even Angels Ask: A Journey to Islam in America
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