John Archibald Wheeler Quotes

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 particular number 1/137.036 and not some other number?

Anyone who expects to create, be it as a scientist or artist, scholar or writer, needs self-confidence, even bravado. How else can one dare to imagine understanding what no one else has understood, discovering what no one else has discovered? Where does this confidence come from? Fortunately, every young person is blessed with some of it. It is part of human character.

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

It was the defining event and remains a thousand degrees hot.

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

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?

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

Nobody can be anybody without somebodies around.

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

'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?

This is *our* Universe, our museum of wonder and beauty, our cathedral.

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.

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

Knowledge only progresses by making mistakes as fast as possible.

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

Never make a calculation until you know the answer. Make an estimate before every calculation, try a simple physical argument (symmetry! invariance! conservation!) before every derivation, guess the answer to every paradox and puzzle. Courage: No one else needs to know what the guess is. Therefore make it quickly, by instinct. A right guess reinforces this instinct. A wrong guess brings the refreshment of surprise. In either case life as a spacetime expert, however long, is more fun!

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

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.

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