Plait Quotes & Sayings

Other job markets may lay claim to the title, but astronomy is actually the world's oldest profession. — Phil Plait

The difference between the dinosaurs and us is that we have a space program and we can vote. — Phil Plait

If you took every nuclear weapon ever built at the height of the Cold War, lumped them together and blew them up at the same time, that would be one one-millionth of the energy released at that moment. — Phil Plait

With her back turned, she loosened each plait until her hair hung in waves that curled around her waist. Then she spun to face him and puffed a sigh.
"Fine. You caught me. I guess there's no use pretending anymore."
Doran settled in and waited for the punch line.
"I lured you onto this ship," she said, "because I couldn't get enough of your scintillating personality."
There it was.
"Kiss me, Doran," she cried, flopping onto the mattress with one arm slung over her eyes and the other clutched to her breast. "I burn for you, hotter than a thousand hells."
He cocked his head to the side. "I think there's an ointment for that. — Melissa Landers

I like to see you in a sari, with your long hair dressed in a single plait. Don't forget that I married a girl from India because I like my wife to be conservative and feminine. — K. Kanagalatha

Science asymptotically approaches reality. — Philip Plait

They say that even the brightest star won't shine forever. But in fact, the brightest star would live the shortest amount of time. Feel free to extract whatever life lesson you want from that. — Philip Plait

I still hear some people say that science takes the wonder out of life. Those people are utterly wrong. Science takes us to the wonder — Phil Plait

You can experience the thrill of discovery, the incredible, visceral feeling of doing something no one has ever done before, see things no one has ever seen before, know something no one has ever known before ... Welcome to science, you're gonna like it here. — Phil Plait

Teach a man to reason and he will think for a lifetime. — Phil Plait

It's dead obvious that creationism isn't science, or even bad science. It's nonsense. But I've long stated it's also bad religion, because it doesn't just take faith, it also takes a phenomenal disregard of reality. — Phil Plait

I'm tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact. — Philip Plait

All of the women in that time and place, Thea had learned, were stuffed into muslin and starched cotton and forced to sit ramrod-straight and plait their hair or pull it back off their faces with fish oil. There were shoes that laced up with a hundred eyelets, and corsets that required a special hook to open. Women were all in it together back then, as opposed to now, when one woman's experience could differ so greatly from another's that you never knew who you were talking to. — Meg Wolitzer

How do you convince someone they're not thinking clearly, when they're not thinking clearly? What we're actually saying is no magic, no afterlife, no higher moral authoritative father-figure, no security, and no happy ever after. This is a tough sell. — Phil Plait

Sure, black holes can kill us, and in a variety of interesting and gruesome ways. But, all in all, we may owe our very existence to them. — Philip Plait

I am using the word theory as a scientist means it: a set of ideas so well established by observations and physical models that it is essentially indistinguishable from fact. That is different from the colloquial use that means "guess." To a scientist, you can bet your life on a theory. Remember, gravity is "just a theory" too. — Philip Plait

His hands would plait the priest's guts, if he had no rope, to strangle kings. — Denis Diderot

And yet, every day, Brian gathers his sister's long hair into a beautiful plait, and just the sound of his voice is enough to calm her when she is uncomfortable and frightened. I think that tells me his real story. — Mary Ann Rivers

Pseudoscience is like a virus. At low levels, it's no big deal, but when it reaches a certain threshold it becomes sickening. — Phil Plait

Let me have two locks of your hair, and help my mother plait them into a bow-string for me. "Does anything depend on it asked Hallgerd". "My life depends on it replied Gunnar. — Anonymous

Astrology ... makes vague predictions that can always be adapted after the fact to fit observations, as we'll see. Astrologers don't seek causes at all, for a good reason: There isn't any cause to astrology. If you look for some underlying reason, some connection between the stars and planets and our lives, you won't find any. For astrology to sell, buyers must not seek out the fundamental principles behind it, because if they do they'll see that there is none. — Phil Plait

Not everything that's cool is science, but everything in science is cool. — Phil Plait

Well, PZ Myers, Jen McCreight, Phil Plait, Amanda Marcotte, Greg Laden, Melissa McEwan and others have all already said it, but I figured I should post this for the record: yes, Richard Dawkins believes I should be a good girl and just shut up about being sexually objectified because it doesn't bother him. Thanks, wealthy old heterosexual white man! — Rebecca Watson

When you're dealing with the universe, ignorance can be deadly. — Phil Plait

The Universe is cool enough without making up crap about it. — Phil Plait

It's amazing to me that not only can we put a probe around Saturn and get images of its moons, but our math and physics are so freaking accurate we can say, "Hey, you know what? On this date at this time if we turn Cassini that way we'll see a moon over 2 million kilometers away pass in front of another one nearly 3 million kilometers away."Every morning, I have a 50/50 chance of finding my keys. That kinda puts things in perspective. — Phil Plait

You meant evil against me," Joseph told his brothers, using a Hebrew verb that traces its meaning to "weave" or "plait." "You wove evil," he was saying, "but God rewove it together for good."

God, the Master Weaver. — Max Lucado

However, science isn't just about showing when you're right; it's also about showing when you're wrong. — Phil Plait

If a little kid ever asks you just why the sky is blue, you look him or her right in the eye and say, It's because of quantum effects involving Rayleigh scattering combined with a lack of violet photon receptors in our retinae. — Philip Plait

Humanity and life are reflected in the stars, and the Universe itself is poetry. — Phil Plait

Watch now," Handful told her. "This rabbit goes under the log, and this rabbit goes over the log. You make them hop like that all the way down. See, that's how you make a plait - hop over, hop under." Nina took possession of the rabbits and the log and created a remarkably passable braid. Handful and I oohed and ahhed as if she'd carved a Florentine statue. It was a winter evening like so many others that passed in quiet predictability: the room flushed with lamplight, a fire nesting on the grate, an early dark flattening against the windows, while my two companions fussed over me at the dresser. — Sue Monk Kidd

The French, it seems to me, strike a happy balance between intimacy and reserve. Some of this must be helped by the language, which lends itself to graceful expression even when dealing with fairly basic subjects ... And there's that famously elegant subtitle from a classic Western.
COWBOY: "Gimme a shot of red-eye."
SUBTITLE: "Un Dubonnet, s'il vous plait."
No wonder French was the language of diplomacy for all those years. — Peter Mayle

When one person got involved, it took everybody else along. I went to jail first, but my entire family soon joined the Movement. One time, Faith & I ended up at home w all the babies from 2 households, because the mamas & the other older sisters were in jail. In the morning we had to plait everybody's hair & feed them--it was a mess! We had all the babies except Peaches Gaines, who was in jail with her mother & my mother. Peaches was jailed because she had not obeyed an officer. She was about 2. Her bond was set at, I believe, $125.00. --Joann Christian Mants — Faith S. Holsaert

Music and literature, the two temporal arts, contrive their pattern of sounds in time; or, in other words, of sounds and pauses. Communication may be made in broken words, the business of life be carried on with substantives alone; but that is not what we call literature; and the true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence, by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear itself.
-ON SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE — Robert Louis Stevenson

Our solar system is fantastically bizarre. There are worlds with features we never imagined. Storms larger than planets, moons with under-surface oceans, lakes of methane, worldlets that swap places ... and that's just at Saturn. — Phil Plait

My destiny has been that I remember and must weave together, must plait into one cable the many threads, the thin, the thick, the broken, the enduring of our long history, of our tumultuous and varied day. There is always more to be understood; a discord to be listened for; a falsity to be reprimanded. — Virginia Woolf

Just like people, stars can be important without being terribly bright. — Phil Plait

The best idea ever thought of in the history of humanity is useless unless someone communicates it. It will die in the test tube. And in our case, what we're communicating here to people is not necessarily something they want to hear. And so, our demeanor - how we deliver this message - takes on crucial, crucial importance. — Phil Plait

Some people try to tell me that science will never answer the big questions we have in life. To them I say: baloney! The real problem is your questions aren't big enough. — Phil Plait

If you wish to view this as a cautionary tale, be my guest. — Philip Plait