"May the universe in some strange sense be brought into being by the participation of those who participate? The vital act is the act of participation. Participator is the incontrovertible new concept given by quantum mechanics. It strikes down the term 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." (John A Wheeler et al, "Gravitation", 1973)
"We will first understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is." (John A Wheeler, "From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch", Cosmic Search Magazine Vol. 1 (4), 1979)
"[…] nature at the quantum level is not a machine that goes its inexorable way. Instead what answer we get depends on the question we put, the experiment we arrange, the registering device we choose. We are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to be happening." (John A Wheeler & Wojciech H Zurek, "Quantum Theory and Measurement", 1983)
"The vision of the Universe that is so vivid in our minds is framed by a few iron posts of true observation - themselves resting on theory for their meaning - but most of all the walls and towers in the vision are of papier-mâché, plastered in between those posts by an immense labor of imagination and theory." (John A Wheeler & Wojciech H Zurek, "Quantum Theory and Measurement", 1983)
"For the advancing army of physics, battling for many a decade with heat and sound, fields and particles, gravitation and spacetime geometry, the cavalry of mathematics, galloping out ahead, provided what it thought to be the rationale for the natural number system. Encounter with the quantum has taught us, however, that we acquire our knowledge in bits; that the continuum is forever beyond our reach. Yet for daily work the concept of the continuum has been and will continue to be as indispensable for physics as it is for mathematics." (John A Wheeler, "Hermann Weyl and the Unity of Knowledge", American Scientist Vol. 74, 1986)
"Of all the 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." (John A Wheeler, "Hermann Weyl and the Unity of Knowledge", American Scientist Vol. 74, 1986)
"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 A Wheeler, Scientific American Vol. 267, 1992)
"[…] the human activity that we call science is not science unless it is the uncovering or discovery of something new." (John A Wheeler, "At Home in the Universe", 1994)
"There is an age-old longing to understand the inner mystery of this strange and beautiful world of ours and our own little place in the scheme of things. Whoever knows a little and can give a little to the search wants to know more and give more." (John A Wheeler, "At Home in the Universe", 1994)
"[…] the pursuit of science is more than the pursuit of understanding. It is driven by the creative urge, the urge to construct a vision, a map, a picture of the world that gives the world a little more beauty and coherence than it had before." (John A Wheeler & Kenneth W Ford, "Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics", 1998)
"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." (John A Wheeler & Kenneth W Ford, "Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics", 1998)
"[…] if one really understood the central point and its necessity in the construction of the world, one ought to be able to state it in one clear, simple sentence. Until we see the quantum principle with this simplicity we can well believe that we do not know the first thing about the universe, about ourselves, and about our place in the universe." (John A Wheeler)
"Little astonishment should there be, therefore, if the description of nature carries one in the end to logic, the ethereal eyrie at the center of mathematics. If, as one believes, all mathematics reduces to the mathematics of logic, and all physics reduces to mathematics, what alternative is there but for all physics to reduce to the mathematics of logic? Logic is the only branch of mathematics that can ‘think about itself’." (John A Wheeler & Kip S Thorne)
"The beauty in the laws of physics is the fantastic simplicity that they have." (John A Wheeler)
"There is no law of physics that does not lend itself to most economical derivation from a symmetry principle. However, a symmetry principle hides from view any sight of the deeper structure that underpins that law and therefore also prevents any immediate sight of how in each case that mutability comes about." (John A Wheeler)
"To my mind there must be, at the bottom of it all, not an equation, but an utterly simple idea. And to me that idea, when we finally discover it, will be so compelling, so inevitable, that we will say to one another, ‘Oh, how beautiful. How could it have been otherwise’." (John A Wheeler)
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