Skip to content

Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, so compelling that when — in a decade, a century, or a millennium — we grasp it, we will all say to each other, "Oh, how could it have been otherwise!"

— John Archibald Wheeler

Another quote →

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.

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.

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.

All John Archibald Wheeler quotes →

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.