John Wheeler

"We are participators in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago."

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

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

"You put in work, the work puts in you."

"Nature isn't classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you'd better make it quantum mechanical."

"The most revolutionary structure is the understanding that we create the universe as we observe it."

"Order from chaos is not free."

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

"Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can help it, 'But how can it be like that?' because you will get 'down the drain', into a blind alley from which nobody has escaped."

"The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality ought to be."

"Useful principles for living: face reality squarely, adapt to it, and make the best of it."

"Information is the foundation of all physical law."

"The boundary between the observer and the observed is not so clear as we once thought."

"There are things about which we know nothing, and yet we must act anyway."

"Physics isn't real; mathematics is real."

"A cloud is the only thing between us and the stars."

"The challenge is to make sense of it all."

"Nature speaks to us in the language of mathematics."

"Relativity and quantum mechanics challenge our deepest assumptions about reality."

"We choose to study the universe because understanding it ennobles us."

"Never underestimate the power of a good question."

"Genius is the ability to see the obvious before anyone else does."

"The future is not written; it emerges from our choices."

"Patience in inquiry is the beginning of all true learning."

"Simplicity is the final sophistication of scientific thought."

"What we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."

"The great ideas of yesterday become the common sense of today."

"Existence by itself is extraordinary."

"A problem well stated is half solved."

"The universe abhors singularity."