Ernest Rutherford Quotes

These experiments might make it possible to produce power by means of nuclear energy and radioactive elements. Unfortunately also perhaps atomic bombs.

Nuclear fission

I love nuclear.

There is no likelihood that man can ever tap the power of the atom

For the first time in history we have got more energy out of something than we put in … [but] …. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of the atom is talking moonshine.

By developing atomic energy for peaceful purposes, you reach the nuclear option. There are no two atomic energies.

I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.

There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.

The idea of atomic energy is illusionary but it has taken so powerful a hold on the minds, that although I have preached against it for twenty-five years, there are still some who believe it to be realizable.

Nuclear energy is the scientific achievement of the Iranian nation.

Fission is like kissing your wife. Fusion is like kissing your mistress.

I would say that I was absolutely convinced of the possibility of our making an uranium engine, but I never thought that we would make a bomb; and at the bottom of my heart, I was really glad that it was to be an engine and not a bomb.

There has been great excitement at the prospect that this atomic bomb or atomic energy is likely to produce great industrial energy very quickly, I do not believe it at all.

No scientific subject has ever aroused quite the same mixture of hopes and fears [as atomic energy].

The barbarian weapon is fission: the splitting asunder. It has been perfected for death. Our only weapon is fusion: an imperfect process still, though designed for life.

It is an anomaly that we can split the atom, but we are nearly powerless to persuade each other to embrace justice.

We hope that this honor you have done us will bring the time of further realization of these benefits closer and will help all mankind to live better and be happier through the atom and isotopes.

I'm going to build a reactor, that's for sure.

Atoms for War and Atoms for Peace are Siamese twins.

In the spring of 1948, I was able to join the newly created Brookhaven National Laboratory, which was dedicated to finding peaceful uses for atomic energy.

The discovery of nuclear reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than the discovery of matches.

No-one really thought of fission before its discovery.

Personally I think there is no doubt that sub-atomic energy is available all around us, and that one day man will release and control its almost infinite power. We cannot prevent him from doing so and can only hope that he will not use it exclusively in blowing up his next door neighbour. (1936)

If all of your electricity in your lifetime came from nuclear [energy], the waste from that lifetime of electricity would go in a Coke can.

Private enterprise did not get us atomic energy.