Nothing exists, save atoms and their combinations. There is no atom, w — Atom

"The Atoms of Democritus And Newtons Particles of light Are sands upon the Red sea shore Where Israels tents do shine so bright."

"As for the atoms, they have been in far worse rows before they became naturalised in my brain, but they forget the days before, etc. At any rate the atoms are a very tough lot, and can stand a great deal of knocking about, and it is strange to find a number of them combining to form a man of feeling."

"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount."

"If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied."

"[A]ll these successive triumphs of research, Dalton’s, Kirchhoff’s, Mendeléeff’s, greatly as they have added to our store of knowledge, have gone but little way to solve the problem which the elementary atoms have for centuries presented to mankind. What the atom of each element is, whether it is a movement, or a thing, or a vortex, or a point having inertia, whether there is any limit to its divisibility, and, if so, how that limit is imposed, whether the long list of elements is final, or whether any of them have any common origin, all these questions remain surrounded by a darkness as profound as ever. The dream which lured the alchemists to their tedious labours, and which may be said to have called chemistry into being, has assuredly not been realised, but it has not yet been refuted. The boundary of our knowledge in this direction remains where it was many centuries ago."

"… Several of Thomson’s colleagues thought he was joking when he argued that the electron was smaller than the atom and was a constituent of every atom; to many scientists, the idea that there could exist matter smaller than the atom was inconceivable. Yet he was proved right."