“I had the good fortune of having my first and only heart attack last January … I call it good fortune because it taught me that there's a limited amount of time left and I better concentrate on one thing: How come existence? How come the quantum? Maybe those questions sound too philosophical, but maybe philosophy is too important to be left to the philosophers.”
As quoted by Amanda Gefter (from the symposium in honor of Wheeler's 90th birthday) [Trespassing on Einstein's lawn: a father, a daughter, the meaning of nothing, and the beginning of everything, 2014, https://books.google.com/books?id=NUMkAAAAQBAJ]
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John Archibald Wheeler 16
American physicist 1911–2008Related quotes
“Perhaps my cynicism comes in good time. Better I have it early than too late.”
Source: Singer from the Sea (1999), Chapter 8, “A Proposal and What Followed” (p. 139)

Kiera the Thief, in Orca (1996), Ch. 9

“The truth is that I imagined every bit of good fortune that has come my way.”
Context: Years later, when "Dilbert" was in thousands of newspapers, people often asked me if I ever imagined being so lucky. I usually said no, because that's the answer people expected. The truth is that I imagined every bit of good fortune that has come my way. But in my imagination I also invented a belt that would allow me to fly and had special permission from Congress to urinate like a bird wherever I wanted. I wake up every morning disappointed that I have to wear pants and walk. Imagination has a way of breeding disappointment.

These precepts were first collected as advice for Fuller's son John.
Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1751) : Many a Man would have been worse, if his Estate had been better.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)
Since "the answers of the special sciences" do not reach "the horizon of total reality", they are given "without having to speak at the same time of 'God and the world.'" (p. 96)
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, p. 95