57 Quotes by Ernest Rutherford

The great object is to find the theory of the matter [of X-rays] before anyone else, for nearly every professor in Europe is now on the warpath.

If, as I have reason to believe, I have disintegrated the nucleus of the atom, this is of greater significance than the war.[Apology to the international anti-submarine committee for being absent from several meetings during World War I.]

I've just finished reading some of my early papers, and you know, when I'd finished I said to myself, 'Rutherford, my boy, you used to be a damned clever fellow.' (1911)

If your experiment needs a statistician, you need a better experiment.

When we consider the magnitude and extent of his discoveries and their influence on the progress of science and of industry, there is no honour too great to pay to the memory of Faraday, one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time.

If you don't do the best with what you have, You could never have done better with what you could have had !

I have to keep going, as there are always people on my track. I have to publish my present work as rapidly as possible in order to keep in the race. The best sprinters in this road of investigation are Becquerel and the Curies...

Now I know what the atom looks like.

The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the ‘social sciences’ is: some do, some don’t.