49 Quotes by John Archibald Wheeler

I like to say, when asked why I pursue science, that it is to satisfy my curiosity, that I am by nature a searcher trying to understand. If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.

One can only learn by teaching.

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

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

Surely where there's smoke there's fire? No, where there's so much smoke there's smoke.

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

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.

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

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