When you're thinking about something that you don't understand, you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion... Now, is the confusion's because we're all some kind of apes that are kind of stupid working against this, trying to figure out [how] to put the two sticks together to reach the banana and we can't quite make it... So I always feel stupid. Once in a while, though, the sticks go together on me and I reach the banana.

Some people think Wheeler's gotten crazy in his later years, but he's always been crazy.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter.

If all of this, all the life of a stream of water, can be nothing but a pile of atoms, how much more is possible?

The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to... No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.

Our poets do not write about it; our artists do not try to portray this remarkable thing. I don't know why. Is nobody inspired by our present picture of the universe? The value of science remains unsung by singers... This is not yet a scientific age.