John Archibald Wheeler Quotes

1 + 1 = 2. Everything else is derived.

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?

When it gets down to it, basketball is basketball.

Words of wisdom are spoken by children at least as often as scientists.

Fate gives you the finger and you accept.

Gospel is just the truth of the word of God. Anybody can sing it, anybody; anybody can perform it.

Platitudes? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true.

Destiny smiles upon me but without making me the least bit happier.

I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world.

Radical simply means grasping things at the root.

A policy ought to start with some principle.

The manner in which life constructs itself must be dealing with some other principle which we've failed to identify.

Gravity doesn't lie.

Life is a four-letter word.

Never invest in any idea you can't illustrate with a crayon

I walked towards my fate with my destiny standing solidly by my side

Sociological method as we practice it rests wholly on the basic principle that social facts must be studied as things, that is, as realities external to the individual. There is no principle for which we have received more criticism; but none is more fundamental. Indubitably for sociology to be possible, it must above all have an object all its own. It must take cognizance of a reality which is not in the domain of other sciences... there can be no sociology unless societies exist, and that societies cannot exist if there are only individuals.

... the ordinary is simply the universal observed from the surface, that the direct approach to reality is not without, but within. Touch life anywhereand you will touch universality wherever you touch the earth.

In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.

Although the pure truth has never been stated, nevertheless it has never been lost. Its existence does not depend upon human statement but upon human sensitivity. In this it is unlike all other knowledge.

Funny how people despise platitudes, when they are usually the truest thing going. A thing has to be pretty true before it gets to be a platitude.

Everything is design. Everything!

Nothing holds it together except an idea which is indestructible.

I am neither Jew nor Gentile, Mohammedan nor Theist; I am but a member of the human family, and would accept of truth by whomsoever offered -- that truth which we can all find, if we will but seek in things, not in words; in nature, not in human imagination; in our own hearts, not in temples made with hands.

History, with all her volumes vast, Hath but one page.