Quotes by John Archibald Wheeler

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

“The universe gives birth to consciousness, and consciousness gives meaning to the universe.”

“But some numbers, called dimensionless numbers, have the same numerical value no matter what units of measurement are chosen. Probably the most famous of these is the "fine-structure constant," ......”

“Physicists love this number not just because it is dimensionless, but also because it is a combination of three fundamental constants of nature. Why do these constants come together to make the par...”

“Individual events. Events beyond law. Events so numerous and so uncoordinated that, flaunting their freedom from formula, they yet fabricate firm form.”

“Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.”

“Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.”

“Space tells matter how to moveMatter tells space how to curve”

“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.”

“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 ...”

“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 ari...”

“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 explainin...”

“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 exis...”

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

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

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

“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 struc...”

“Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.”

“Today I think we are beginning to suspect that man is not a tiny cog that doesn’t really make much difference to the running of the huge machine, but rather that there is a much more intimate tie b...”

“We are participators in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago. We are in this sense, participators in bringing about something of the universe in the distant ...”