There has been no discovery like it in the history of man. It puts into man's hands the key to using the fundamental energy of the universe.

The history of man is dominated by, and reflects, the amount of available energy

Man cannot influence in this respect the atomic forces of Nature.

I believe that there have been civilisations in the past that were familiar with atomic energy, and that by misusing it they were totally destroyed.

The dropping of the Atomic Bomb is a very deep problem... Instead of commemorating Hiroshima we should celebrate... man's triumph over the problem [of transmutation], and not its first misuse by politicians and military authorities.

In so far as such developments utilise the natural energy running to waste, as in water power, they may be accounted as pure gain. But in so far as they consume the fuel resources of the globe they are very different. The one is like spending the interest on a legacy, and the other is like spending the legacy itself. ... [There is] a still hardly recognised coming energy problem.

It is curious to reflect, for example, upon the remarkable legend of the Philosopher's Stone, one of the oldest and most universal beliefs, the origin of which, however far back we penetrate into the records of the past, we do not probably trace its real source.