The more physics you have the less engineering you need.

Every good laboratory consists of first rate men working in great harmony to insure the progress of science; but down at the end of the hall is an unsociable, wrong-headed fellow working on unprofitable lines, and in his hands lies the hope of discovery.

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

Splitting the atom is like trying to shoot a gnat in the Albert Hall at night and using ten million rounds of ammunition on the off chance of getting it. That should convince you that the atom will always be a sink of energy and never a reservoir of energy.

It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.

Gentlemen, now you will see that now you see nothing. And why you see nothing you will see presently.

If, as I have reason to believe, I have disintegrated the nucleus of the atom, this is of greater significance than the war.