I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding, they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

But the real glory of science is that we can find a way of thinking such that the law is evident.

'Conservation' (the conservation law) means this ... that there is a number, which you can calculate, at one moment-and as nature undergoes its multitude of changes, this number doesn't change. That is, if you calculate again, this quantity, it'll be the same as it was before. An example is the conservation of energy: there's a quantity that you can calculate according to a certain rule, and it comes out the same answer after, no matter what happens, happens.

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

Scientists are explorers. Philosophers are tourists.

I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

If science is to progress, what we need is the ability to experiment, honesty in reporting results—the results must be reported without somebody saying what they would like the results to have been—and finally—an important thing—the intelligence to interpret the results.