“We haven’t the money, so we’ve got to think”
Entry in progress—B.P.
Wikiquote: Earnest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM PC FRS (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a nuclear physicist from New Zealand. He was known as the “father” of nuclear physics. He pioneered the orbital theory of the atom in his discovery of Rutherford scattering off the nucleus with the gold foil experiment.
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We’ve got no money, so we’ve got to think.
. As quoted in Quips, Quotes, and Quanta : An Anecdotal History of Physics (2007) by Anton Z. Capri, page 65.
. Unsourced variant: We didn’t have the money, so we had to think.
Wikiquote: Talk:Winston Churchill
Unsourced
Gentlemen, we have run out of money. Now we have to think.[citation needed]
. This quote, or a minor variation of it (“Gentlemen, we have run out of money. It is time to start thinking.”) is also attributed to (Sir) Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), the famed New Zealand chemist and physicist.
Google Books
Aberdeen University Review
Volumes 34-35
1952
Pg. 74:
“We haven’t any money so we’ve got to think.”
Google Books
Chemical & Process Engineering
Volume 33
1952
Pg. 448:
It might be argued that we did not have enough money to exploit our discoveries, but God was not always with the big battalions and he recalled Rutherford’s advice in a similar situation, “We haven’t any money so we’ve got to think.”
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Proceedings
Edited by Randall McVay Whaley
Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council
1957
Pg. 88:
Sir Henry Tizard was responsible for two other statements that I would like to repeat here. He said: “we don’t learn by common sense, but by catastrophe. He also quoted the following gem: “We don’t have any money, so we have to think!”
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Science and the Nation:
The B.B.C. Reith lectures for 1956
By Sir Edward Victor Appleton
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
1957
Pg. 41:
There is the famous remark of Rutherford’s, “We’ve got no money so we’ve got to think.”
Google Books
Rutherford and the Nature of the Atom
By Edward Neville da Costa Andrade
Garden City, NY: Doubleday
1964
Pg. 188:
He impressed Rutherford with the need for applying the technique of electrical engineering to problems of physics, rather than relying on the old methods involving only apparatus put together by one or two pairs of hands, the apparatus that belonged to the days when Rutherford had said, “We’ve got no money, so we’ve got to think.”
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The growth points of physics; proceedings of the Florence inaugural conference, Florence, Italy, 8-12 April 1969
European Physical Society.
Florence
1970
Pg. XXXIII:
It is about that time that Rutherford is credited with the famous crack « because we have not enough money, we must think all the more ».
Google Books
Oliphant, the Life and Times of Sir Mark Oliphant
By Stewart Cockburn and David Ellyard
Adelaide: Axiom Books
1981
Pg. 31:
We haven’t the money so we have to think.
Ernest Rutherford
Google Books
Treatise on Basic Philosophy:
Volume 6: Epistemology & Methodology II
By Mario Bunge
Boston, MA: D. Reidel Publishing Company
1983
Pg. 99:
Austerity has its virtues: as Lord Rutherford used to say, “We’ve got no money, so we’ve got to think.”
10 January 2003, Concord (NH) Monitor, “Reaction to Benson address a mixed bag” by Jennifer Skalka, pg. 17:
“In the words of Winston Churchill,” Benson said, “we’ve run out of money, now it’s time to think.”
National Defense Magazine
‘Gentlemen, We Have Run Out Of Money; Now We Have to Think’
November 2011
By Lawrence P. Farrell Jr.
The quote above is attributed to Sir Winston Churchill. A variation, “We’ve got no money, so we’ve got to think,” is attributed to the New Zealand physicist, Ernest Rutherford. Both of them have precisely nailed the situation in which the United States finds itself today.