John Archibald Wheeler Quotes

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

You are not an observer, you are a participant.

Don't look at the world with your hands in your pockets. To write about it you have to reach out and touch it.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

When you go to a club and always sit on the bench and look at the team, it is not easy.

We are today beginning to see work by very reputable scientists that says the universe is created by our observations. It is not a coincidence; we are actively involved in physically shaping the world that we experience.

You can't have a universe without the mind entering into it.

The thing is I never want to be an observer, it's only in retrospect that I wish I had observed.

Dear young people, please, don’t be observers of life, but get involved. Jesus did not remain an observer, but he immersed himself. Don’t be observers, but immerse yourself in the reality of life, as Jesus did.

The 'path' comes into existence only when we observe it.

Nothing has existence unless you, I, or some living creature perceives it, and how it is perceived further influences that reality. Even time itself is not exempted from biocentrism.

The main reason why people should care about research in fundamental physics is the same reason they care about astronomy and cosmology. People, children, want to know what we're made out of, how it works, and why the universe is the way it is.

Nothing puzzles me more than the time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less.

I try to be of the world, rather than just observing it.

The universe is a great mystery.

Space and time may have a structure as intricate as the fauna of a rich ecosystem, but on a scale far larger than the horizon of our observations.

Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.

I'd really like to be in closer contact with life. I'm a little too distant, I guess. I like to place myself outside.

There is neither spirit nor matter in the world. The stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No other substance but this could have produced the human molecule.

Even in empty space, time and space still exist.

People don't understand that when you come into any theatrical experience, you've got to come locked and loaded, that you're a part of the experience, too. You can't come with your arms crossed. Be open to it.

One of the weird things about modern physics is that we do find there are apparently these other dimensions that we don't directly experience that explain some aspects of the overall geometry and reality of our universe.

When I watch good friends play, it's almost worse when you're watching, because you have zero impact: you have zero hand in what's going on. When I'm playing, you don't have that because I'm involved in it. I have some kind of say in what's going on.

The best thing you can do to an audience is to make them work.

We see the universe the way it is because we exist.