John R. Platt Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

It is a curious thing that relatively little attention has been directed toward working out methods for keeping the peace in a disarmed world. The technological The technological developments of the last twenty years have made disarmament a major concern of most nations, for it has become apparent that war is no longer an effective means for settling disputes between the great powers.

John R. Platt
The man to watch, the man to put your money on, is not the man who wants to make "a survey" or a "more detailed study" but the man with the notebook, the man with the alternative hypotheses and the crucial experiments, the man who knows how to answer your Question of disproof and is already working on it.

John R. Platt
The world has become too dangerous for anything less than utopias.

John R. Platt
Jesus does not give us a discourse on the nature of the universe, he gives us a set of active verbs. And yet what better discourse on the real nature of the universe could there be?

John R. Platt
If this property of complexity could somehow be transformed into visible brightness so that it would stand forth more clearly to our senses, the biological world would become a walking field of light compared to the physical world. The sun with its great eruptions would fade to a pale simplicity compared to a rose bush, an earth worm would be a beacon, a dog a city of light, and human beings would stand out like blazing suns of complexity, flashing bursts of meaning to each other through the dull night of the physical world between. We would hurt each other's eyes. Look at the haloed heads of your rare and complex companions. Is it not so?

John R. Platt
Planning a good society as far ahead as one can see, does not mean that our adventures have ended; they have just begun. Human nature is growing up. As we put behind us the accidents and tears of childhood squabbles and the wooden swords and shields, and begin to try on our new space pilots' uniform, so to speak, we begin to see what we can teach ourselves and what we can really become with new self-control over new adult powers.

John R. Platt
The needs of man, if life is to survive, are usually said to be four — air, water, food, and in the severe climates, protection. But it is becoming clear today that the human organism has another absolute necessity... This fifth need is the need for novelty — the need, throughout our waking life, for continuous variety in the external stimulation of our eyes, ears, sense organs, and all our nervous network.

John R. Platt
The chemistry of genetics is primarily the chemistry and structure of the hereditary nucleic acid chains, DNA and RNA, and of the proteins whose structure they in turn control and the mechanism of this control.

John R. Platt
To say that basic science is exciting may sound like a contradiction... But I would remind you that there are two intellectual excitements that are not tame at all and that we remember all our lives. One is the thrill of following out a chain of reasoning for yourself; the other is the pleasure of watching several strongly individualistic personalities argue about their deepest convictions. That is to say, the thrill of a detective story and the pleasure of watching a play by George Bernard Shaw.

John R. Platt
Going to the moon is not a matter of physics but of economics.

John R. Platt