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)

Now I know what the atom looks like.

We are rather like children, who must take a watch to pieces to see how it works.

We haven't got the money, so we've got to think.

Gentlemen, we have run out of money. It is time to start thinking.

I am a great believer in the simplicity of things and as you probably know I am inclined to hang on to broad & simple ideas like grim death until evidence is too strong for my tenacity.

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.