If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

That which is not measurable is not science. That which is not physics is stamp collecting.

Radioactivity is shown to be accompanied by chemical changes in which new types of matter are being continually produced. .... The conclusion is drawn that these chemical changes must be sub-atomic in character.

The year 1896 ... marked the beginning of what has been aptly termed the heroic age of Physical Science. Never before in the history of physics has there been witnessed such a period of intense activity when discoveries of fundamental importance have followed one another with such bewildering rapidity.

A good scientific theory should be explicable to a barmaid.

I must confess it was very unexpected and I am very startled at my metamorphosis into a chemist.

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)