John Wheeler

"The universe rewards those who persist in seeking understanding."

"Information is not merely recorded; it is created through observation."

"To master nature, we must first learn to respect it."

"The deepest insights often come when we stop trying so hard."

"We are both observers of the universe and participants in its creation."

"The universe is a symphony of forces playing together in harmony."

"Truth is not handed down; it is discovered through inquiry."

"The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once."

"No phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered phenomenon."

"We are not separate from the universe; we are part of it and it is part of us."

"The most revolutionary concept in science is that nature obeys laws."

"Information may not be conserved. Black holes destroy information."

"Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, so compelling that when we finally glimpse it we will say to each other: how could it have been otherwise?"

"You put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity."

"The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

"Science is organized curiosity; it is asking the right questions in order to obtain the maximum information."

"Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry."

"A black hole has no hair—all that matters is its mass, charge, and angular momentum."

"Delayed choice experiments show that the universe is participatory."

"We live on an island of knowledge surrounded by a sea of ignorance."

"The past has no existence except as it is recorded in the present."

"What we call 'real' is made of things that cannot be regarded as real."

"God is in the details."

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

"Everything is information. The building blocks of reality are not particles or fields, but bits."

"From my earliest training as a physicist, I was schooled to believe that any intuitive notion as to the characters of physical reality could and should be checked experimentally."

"It from bit. Every 'it'—every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself—derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions."

"The greatest power you have is the power of choice."

"We are here not only to transform the universe, but to be transformed by it."