Carolina QuotesTime is nature's way to keep everything from happening all at once.
John Archibald Wheeler Connected to the Carolinas
Source
Wheeler quoted this saying in Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information (1990), p. 10, with a footnote attributing it to "graffiti in the men's room of the Pecan Street Cafe, Austin, Texas". Later publications, such as Paul Davies' 1995 book About Time (p. 236), credited Wheeler with variations of this saying, but the quip is actually much older. The earliest known source is Ray Cummings' 1922 science fiction novel The Girl in the Golden Atom, Ch. V: " 'Time,' he said, 'is what keeps everything from happening at once.' " It also appears in his 1929 novel The Man Who Mastered Time. The earliest known occurrence other than Cummings is from 1962 in Film Facts: Volume 5, p. 48.
- year
- 1922
- locator
- p. 10
misattributed
Cite this record
“Time is nature's way to keep everything from happening all a…” John Archibald Wheeler. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-984B3B2C0B. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/984b3b2c0b
More from John Archibald Wheeler
There are many modes of thinking about the world around us and our place in it. I like to consider all the angles from which we might gain perspective on our amazing universe and the nature of existence.
We will first understand how simple the universe is when we realize how strange it is.
Of all obstacles to a thoroughly penetrating account of existence, none looms up more dismayingly than “time.” Explain time? Not without explaining existence. Explain existence? Not without explaining time. To uncover the deep and hidden connection between time and existence, to close on itself our quartet of questions, is a task for the future.