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Time is not a primary category, and the asymmetry of time between past and future is not a primary category in the description of nature. It is secondary and derived.

— John Archibald Wheeler

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Time

More quotes by John Archibald Wheeler

Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.

We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.

Of all heroes, Spinoza was Einstein's greatest. No one expressed more strongly than he a belief in the harmony, the beauty, and most of all the ultimate comprehensibility of nature.

We will first understand how simple the universe is when we realize how strange it is.

Therefore we can afford many mistakes in the search. The main thing is to make them as fast as possible.

All John Archibald Wheeler quotes →

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

Sanu Sharma

You can never plan the future by the past.

Edmund Burke A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now does always last.

Abraham Cowley Poems (1656)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Archibald Wheeler (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.