John Archibald Wheeler Quotes

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• Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium - we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid?

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Beautiful, Stupid, Simple

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• Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Moving, Curves, Matter

  John Archibald Wheeler (2010). “Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics”, p.235, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The universe gives birth to consciousness, and consciousness gives meaning to the universe.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Giving, Birth, Consciousness

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• Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Funny, Time, Happenings

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• We are not only observers. We are participators. In some strange sense this is aparticipatory universe.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Strange, Observers, Universe

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• 'Participant' is the incontrovertible new concept given by quantum mechanics. It strikes down the 'observer' of classical theory, the man who stands safely behind the thick glass wall and watches what goes on without taking part. It can't be done, quantum mechanics says it...May the universe in some sense be 'brought into being' by the participation of those who participate?

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Wall, Men, Glasses

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

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Ocean, Learning, Ignorance

  "Scientific American", Vol. 267, 1992.

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• No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Real, Science, Phenomenon

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• We all know that the real reason universities have students is in order to educate the professors.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Real, Order, Students

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• It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom...an immaterial source and explanation...that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Ideas, World, Information

  "Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information" edited by Wojciech H. Zurek, (p. 5), 1990.

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• In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Science, Fields, Exploration

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• Time, among all concepts in the world of physics, puts up the greatest resistance to being dethroned from ideal continuum to the world of the discrete, of information, of bits.... 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 ... is a task for the future.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Time, Connections, Tasks

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• The observer cannot be left out of the description of the observation.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Description, Observation, Left

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• It is my opinion that everything must be based on a simple idea. And it is my opinion that this idea, once we have finally discovered it, will be so compelling, so beautiful, that we will say to one another, yes, how could it have been any different.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Beautiful, Simple, Ideas

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• No space, no time, no gravity, no electromagnetism, no particles. Nothing. We are back where Plato, Aristotle and Parmenides struggled with the great questions: How Come the Universe, How Come Us, How Come Anything? But happily also we have around the answer to these questions. That's us.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Plato, Space, Answers

  "Peering Through the Gates of Time" by Dennis Overbye, www.nytimes.com. March 12, 2002.

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• In order to more fully understand this reality, we must take into account other dimensions of a broader reality.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Science, Reality, Order

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• The job of a theoretical physicist is to make mistakes as fast as possible .

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Jobs, Mistake, Physicist

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

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Simple, Firsts, Strange

  John Archibald Wheeler (2010). “Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics”, p.5, W. W. Norton & Company

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• If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Grace, Strange, Found

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The laws of physics that we regard
  as 'sacred,' as immutable, are anything
  but.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Law, Sacred, Physics

  John Archibald Wheeler (2010). “Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics”, p.298, W. W. Norton & Company

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• 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

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Philosophy, Thinking, India

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• Now is the time for everyone who believes in the rule of reason to speak up against pathological science and its purveyors.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Believe, Speak, Reason

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• One can only learn by teaching.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Teaching, Physics

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• To hate is to study, to study is to understand, to understand is to appreciate, to appreciate is to love. So maybe I'll end up loving your theory.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Hate, Appreciate, Loving You

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• Every heat engineer knows he can design his heat engine reliably and accurately on the foundation of the second law [of thermodynamics]. Run alongside one of the molecules, however, and ask it what it thinks of the second law. It will laugh at us. It never heard of the second law. It does what it wants. All the same, a collection of billions upon billions of such molecules obeys the second law with all the accuracy one could want

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Running, Thinking, Law

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