John Archibald Wheeler Quotes

Space tells matter how to move
Matter tells space how to curve

We will first understand how simple the universe is when we realize how strange it is.

Of all heroes, Spinoza was Einstein's greatest. No one expressed more strongly than he a belief in the harmony, the beauty, and most of all the ultimate comprehensibility of nature.

Of all obstacles to a thoroughly penetrating account of existence, none looms up more dismayingly than “time.” Explain time? Not without explaining existence. Explain existence? Not without explaining time. To uncover the deep and hidden connection between time and existence, to close on itself our quartet of questions, is a task for the future.

It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — at a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe.

What we think of as smooth simple space is really a wiggly business.

There are many modes of thinking about the world around us and our place in it. I like to consider all the angles from which we might gain perspective on our amazing universe and the nature of existence.

We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.

I like to think that someone will trace how the deepest thinking of India made its way to Greece and from there to the philosophy of our times.

The question is—what is the question?

If I had to confess, under torture, right now, what I think the simple idea is, I would say it's that we ourselves generate the world; the world is self-generated. But it may well be absolutely wrong.

Is the very mechanism for the universe to come into being meaningless or unworkable or both unless the universe is guaranteed to produce life, consciousness and observership somewhere and for some little time in its history-to-be? The quantum principle shows that there is a sense in which what the observer will do in the future defines what happens in the past—even in a past so remote that life did not then exist, and shows even more, that 'observership' is a prerequisite for any useful version of 'reality'.

I had the good fortune of having my first and only heart attack last January ... I call it good fortune because it taught me that there's a limited amount of time left and I better concentrate on one thing: How come existence? How come the quantum? Maybe those questions sound too philosophical, but maybe philosophy is too important to be left to the philosophers.

For all our everyday experience, the geometry of space is smooth and flat. But as we examine it more closely, it must show oscillations. And still more closely, it must show foam, a foam-like structure. And that means that down at the very smallest distances, this idea of before and after really lose their meaning.

The best way to learn something is to have to teach it.