Seminal Quotes & Sayings

Billy made a noise like a small, rusty hinge. He had just emptied his seminal vesicles into Valencia, had contributed his share of the Green Beret. According to the Tralfamadorians, of course, the Green Beret would have seven parents in all. — Kurt Vonnegut

Okay, that's intensely interesting," Duvall said. "So you're a priest of the Forshan religion? Which schism?"
"The leftward schism, and no, not a priest."
"Couldn't handle the celibacy?"
"Leftward priests aren't required to be celibate," Dahl said, "but considering I was the only human at the seminary, I had celibacy thrust upon me, if you will."
"Some people wouldn't let that stop them," Duvall said.
"You haven't seen a Forshan seminary student up close," Dahl said. "Also, I don't swing xeno. — John Scalzi

The fundamentalists, in their struggle against the modernists, had identified the "Social Gospel" and the concern for social justice expressed in Charles Sheldon's seminal work asking "What would Jesus do?" as a hallmark of heresy. Rice and other fundamentalists viewed the "Social Gospel" as tantamount to believing in salvation through "works" rather than faith. Salvation, they averred, was the result of God's unearned grace rather than anything humans might do for themselves. They charged the modernists with imagining salvation might be achieved by working to improve society. — Andrew Himes

Far too often, it is at the moment where we finally stand on the very precipice of some great thing that we turn and abandon it, for it is at these seminal moments that fear wins and greatness dies. The beauty of Christmas is that God steps over precipices. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

If you're going to write, write one poem all your life, let nobody read it, and then burn it. This is very young thinking, I confess, but it is the seminal part of my life. — Jack Nicholson

Rather let us imagine the anima mundi as that particular soul-spark, that seminal image, which offers itself through each thing in its visible form. Then anima mundi indicates the animated possibilities presented by each new event as it is, its sensuous presentation as a face bespeaking its interior image - in short, its availability to imagination, its presence as psychic reality. Not only animals and plants ensouled as in the Romantic vision, but soul is given with each thing, God-given things of nature and man-made things of the street. — James Hillman

In the early part of the ninth century, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a mathematician working in Baghdad, wrote a seminal textbook in which he highlighted the usefulness of restoring a quantity being subtracted (like 2, above) by adding it to the other side of an equation. He called this process al-jabr (Arabic for "restoring"), which later morphed into "algebra." Then, long after his death, he hit the etymological jackpot again. His own name, al-Khwarizmi, lives on today in the word "algorithm. — Steven H. Strogatz

I started to write [ The Name of the Rose ] in March of 1978, moved by a seminal idea. I wanted to poison a monk. — Umberto Eco

In his seminal book, Man's Search for Meaning, the psychiatrist Victor Frankl described the essence of what has come to be known as an existential approach to the human condition with this metaphor: "If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch," he wrote, "they increase the load which is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together." It is similarly true, he said, that therapy aimed at fostering mental health often should lay increased weight on a patient, creating what he described as "a sound amount of tension through a reorientation toward the meaning of one's own life. — Joshua Wolf Shenk

Dreadful science can pass for seminal research in the field of obesity. — Gary Taubes

The idea that cancer genes are sitting inside each and every one of our chromosomes, just waiting to be corrupted or inactivated and thereby unleashing cancer, is, of course, one of the seminal ideas of oncology. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

It will be a seminal moment in the history of science, Will Henry, the finding of the magnificum, and not without some ancillary benefit to me personally. If I succeed, it will bring nothing short of immortality
well, the only concept of immortality that I'm prepared to accept. But if I do succeed, the space between us and the ineffable will shrink a little more. It is what we strive for as scientists, and what we dread as human beings. There is something in us that longs for the indescribable, the unattainable, the thing that cannot be seen. — Rick Yancey

I believe motherhood will be the seminal event in your life. You will find it in turns gratifying, frustrating, amazing, and overwhelming. It will be the most marvelous, challenging, vital role you'll ever play. " 'Someone once told me, "As mothers, our job is not to raise children, but to raise adults. — Lori Nelson Spielman

In the Deep South, the unequal distribution of school funds based on Negroes' "mental inferiority" was one way the caste system maintained itself through the generations. "Inferior" students got inferior schools, but truly, it was the inferior schools that created the inferior students. The two years of study resulted in the book Deep South, a seminal book in modern anthropology. — Alison Stewart

Out of the chaos and darkness of Nun rose Ammon-Ra, He-Who-Creates-Himself. I watched Ammon-Ra stroke his generative member, masturbating and spurting out his seminal seed in mighty waves that left the silver smear that we know as the Milky Way across the dark void. From this seed were generated Geb and Nut, the earth and the heaven. — Wilbur Smith

A car is a big thing for anyone going into adulthood, it's a big seminal moment. — Michael Bay

Techno-shamanism is a sub-genre of science fiction that is not recognized. Ernest Hogan's "Smoking Mirror Blues" is a seminal work in techno-shamanism. — Frank S. Lechuga

In his seminal article, "The Capacity to Be Alone," psychoanalyst and child development expert D. W. Winnicott asserted that the ability to be alone "is one of the most important signs of maturity in emotional development. — Laurie A. Helgoe

Disability scholars Andrienne Asch and Erik Parens, in their seminal discussion of the problem, wrote,'Pre-natal diagnosis reinforces the medical model that disability itself, not societal discrimination against people with disabilities, is the problem to be solved. — Andrew Solomon

I grew up with probably three different authors having a seminal influence on my childhood, Dr. Seuss being one and Maurice Sendak being another. That was my parents, who exposed me to their stories. That's how I was introduced to the whole idea of not just reading, but storytelling in general. — Christopher Meledandri

The Voting Rights Act was a seminal victory for our country and a great healing moment. But there are some who want to continue to drive divisions and create phony narratives. — John Cornyn

He's a seminal force, a guru, an original creator of the New Orleans piano style.. the teacher of great players like Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, Mac Rebenack, James Booker, and Huey Smith. All acknowledge him as The Great Master. — Jerry Wexler

Who could have guessed at the dawn of the 21st century, the seminal technology upon which 5000 years of modern science had resulted was the click? — Ken Goldstein

From the period of development to the present, Reformed theologians have debated the finer points (particularly the relation of the Sinai covenant to the covenant of grace). Nevertheless, a consensus emerged (evident, for example, in the Westminster Confession) affirming the three covenants I have mentioned: the eternal covenant of redemption; the covenant of works; and the covenant of grace. With these last two covenants, Reformed theology affirmed (with Lutheranism) the crucial distinction between law and gospel, but within a more concrete biblical-historical framework ... Ironically, just at the moment when so much Protestant biblical scholarship is rejecting a sharp distinction between law and gospel, Ancient Near Eastern scholars from Jewish and Roman Catholic traditions have demonstrated the accuracy of that seminal distinction between covenant of law and covenants of promise. P.13 — Michael S. Horton

One has a sort of spiritual obligation to go back to the source material of the literature, to make contact with one of the seminal plays of the modern theater. — Arthur Penn

I've become absolutely convinced that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre or unsuccessful ones has little, if anything, to do with what they know or how smart they are; it has everything to do with how healthy they are. — Patrick Lencioni

I've always been interested in Vietnam, feel it's a seminal event in our nation's history, and have explored it over the years - but I hadn't been interested in doing a documentary about it. I felt there had been a lot done about Vietnam, and didn't know if I could add anything new to the discussion. — Rory Kennedy

Socrates claimed famously that one never loses by doing the right thing. Stephen Post and his contributors claim, a little less boldly, that at least the generous will, probably, stay healthy - and, improving on Socrates, they support this claim with careful empirical science, impressive for its comprehensive detail. Here ethics and religion join science and enjoin us to be more caring and healthy. A seminal work, with an urgent message. — Holmes Rolston III

Conservatives or better, pro- corporate apologists hijacked the vocabulary of Jeffersonian liberalism and turned words like " progress ," " opportunity ," and " individualism " into tools for making the plunder of America sound like divine right ... This "degenerate and unlovely age," as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove the reputed brain of George W. Bush as the seminal age of inspiration for politics and governance of America today. — Bill Moyers

His new idea was published that month in what became yet another seminal Einstein paper, "Cosmological Considerations in the General Theory of Relativity."9 On the surface, it did indeed seem to be based on a crazy notion: space has no borders because gravity bends it back on itself. Einstein — Walter Isaacson

Wilke subscribed to the principles laid out in a seminal book about constraints in manufacturing, Eliyahu M. Goldratt's The Goal, published in 1984. — Brad Stone

Like everyone else, I love 'Born Again:' that was a seminal work for me. Everything Frank Miller did on 'Daredevil' is like the Bible. — Drew Goddard

The essence of a religion can be discovered by asking its adherents one question: 'What, to your mind, was the seminal moment in the history of the world?' — Meir Soloveichik

The core concept in Griffin's writings about racism - that members of dominant groups tend to view minorities, because they seem different in some extrinsic way, as intrinsically other, and "as merely underdeveloped versions of their own imprisoning culture" - was intuited in Black Like Me and articulated in a seminal essay, "The Intrinsic Other — John Howard Griffin

All she had to do was stay where she was, go on as she was.
But there was no Tatiana here. Tatiana remained with Alexander. Her arms were around him in Lake
Ladoga, where she lay down with him every night. Her arms were holding him bleeding out into the Lake
Ladoga ice. She could have let go of him then, could have given him to God; God was certainly calling
for him.
But she didn't.
And because she didn't, she was here in America, sitting on the ledge of the rest of her life. It certainly
felt that way, that seminal moment where she knew that whatever her decision, her life would take either
one course or it would take another.
One way the path was plain and vivid.
And the other was black and fraught with doubt — Paullina Simons

To the creative individual all experience is seminal-all events are equidistant from new ideasand insights. — Eric Hoffer

His research led him to one overwhelming conclusion, published in a seminal paper in 1975: big cities nurture subcultures much more effectively than suburbs or small towns. — Steven Johnson

Women, he would say, are not Muses. Muses are Muses. To confuse one with the other is to mistake the Devouring Void for the Seminal Light. Earthly Women and the Muses are ancient, sworn enemies. The battlefield is the Creative Male. On the one side is the encampment of Discordia, of Diana, of Venus located in his Heart and in his Groin. On the other is the Bastion of Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania, in his Brain and in his Mind. The Muses are tolerant and understanding of border raids, skirmishes, and harassing maneuvers. Throughout the history of the Male Light, there have been few painters, few writers, who have not had a She Who Must Be Accommodated. For some it was their mothers. For many their wives, their mistresses, their girlfriends. For many it was their daughters, a favourite waitress, a stripper, a whore. To the Muses, they are all one. Mother, whore, wife, daughter, stripper, waitress, mistress, girlfriend. — Dave Sim

If any other religious cult knew so few basic facts about its own seminal beliefs as the liberal cult does about Joe McCarthy, Janet Reno would gas them. — Ann Coulter

The story drove the book. That had a very seminal effect on the way I saw writing and storytelling. If you can set a character in a story that is compelling and has a backbone, you draw people in. — Dick Wolf

From time to time, you have seminal personalities who really change the way the world sees itself - people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela. Warren Buffett is that kind of person in the business world. — Guy Spier

Despite the perturbations of the world, life goes on.
The sky presents an endless canopy of translucent blue. The still air is suffused with sunshine.
Perhaps tomorrow the beneficent clouds will gather and it will finally rain. The earth will cool and revive and in that seminal moment all our sins perchance will be washed away.
It might happen.
But somehow I doubt it. — John Dolan

he attended a Buddhist retreat in the north of England at which the principal teachers were a small group of Buddhist nuns. He no longer remembers any details about the tradition they belonged to, but he remembers well the profound effect their teachings had on him. At the core of the retreat were instructions on how participants could develop a practice of meditation through using the breath as a focus to remain anchored in the present moment. "What the nuns pointed me to was the part of their tradition kept alive through monastic practice for 2,500 years," he says. "This was the importance of staying in the present moment, the importance of calm abiding, the practice of concentration in Buddhism known as samatha." This time spent in the company of nuns, listening to their guidance, was "a seminal moment. — Christine Toomey

The seminal elements of what makes a story great - challenge, struggle, resolution - are the same whether we're talking about story content for a movie such as 'Rain Man,' or telling a purposeful story to forge new business relationships or conclude a fruitful transaction, such as acquiring an NBA franchise. — Peter Guber

A thirty-two-ounce soda and a tank of gas is America distilled to its seminal fluids. — Richard Manning

This is not for the purpose of personal criticism. The point is much larger and more fundamental: Mr. Obama is descriptive of an almost perfect example of a man who embodies the sum game result, the cumulative effect of America's slow but sure march to cultural impoverishment and political collectivism. Actions of his that unfailingly advance the agendas of previous activists and presidents will be highlighted as proof that the original, seminal, "transformational" objectives are still operative in the present. — Alexandra York

I happened to fall into a job that wound up being a seminal piece of television history, which was a show I did on HBO called 'The Wire.' That experience really set the bar for me and opened a lot of doors. It also gave me a lot of street cred in terms of my phone ringing and job offers. — Deirdre Lovejoy

If we expect translation to reproduce the totality of the semantics and affective uses of the original text, then we believe that translation must be loyal to the seminal language system, rather than letting the discourse travel and undertake the adventure of discovering - or creating - a new set of meaning according to the politics of the translation itself. Rigid loyalty to the original in the translated version was, in effect, the intentionality of the translation of the doctrines and precepts that constituted the colonial discourse. — Hector Dominguez Ruvalcaba

One of Sherrington's greatest pupils, Sir John Eccles, held similar views. Eccles won a Nobel Prize for his seminal contributions to our understanding of how nerve cells communicate across synapses, or nerve junctions. In his later years, he worked toward a deeper understanding of the mechanisms mediating the interaction of mind and brain-including the elusive notion of free will. Standard neurobiology tells us that tiny vesicles in the nerve endings contain chemicals called neurotransmitters; in response to an electrical impulse, some of the vesicles release their contents, which cross the synapse and transmit the impulse to the adjoining neuron. In 1986 Eccles proposed that the probability of neurotransmitter release depended on quantum mechanical processes, which can be influenced by the intervention of the mind. This, Eccles said, provided a basis for the action of a free will. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

She hadn't even known they were volcanic, but now they were lobbing big seminal gobbets of lava all over their lower slopes, like a drunk prom queen puking on her dress. Shit was getting geological, yo. — Lev Grossman

I have an immature, Homer Simpson-like tendency to giggle when I say the words 'seminal fluids' in public. — Stephenie Meyer

Popular textbooks on database systems include Database Systems: The Complete Book by Garcia-Molina, Ullman, and Widom [GMUW08]; Database Management Systems by Ramakrishnan and Gehrke [RG03]; Database System Concepts by Silberschatz, Korth, and Sudarshan [SKS10]; and Fundamentals of Database Systems by Elmasri and Navathe [EN10]. For an edited collection of seminal articles on database systems, see Readings in Database Systems by Hellerstein and Stonebraker [HS05].
There are also many books on data warehouse — Vipin Kumar

Of the seminal moments in my life, Careers Day in the autumn of Year 5 is my favorite. Everyone had to dress as whatever they wanted to be once they grew up. I had gone in a tweed jacket and a bow tie, and when Miss Weston asked me what I wanted to be, I told her that I wanted to be the Doctor.

'Shouldn't you be wearing a lab coat and stethoscope like Paul?' She pointed to Paul Black, who was trying to strangle everyone with the stethoscope in question.

Before I could answer, a boy I didn't know from the other class spoke up.

'Paul's *a* doctor,' he explained, giving me a look of approval. 'He wants to be *the* Doctor.'

'Who?'

'Exactly,' we said at the same time, relieved that she understood.

She didn't. We were sent to the quiet table to reflect on why cheeking teachers was wrong. — Non Pratt

[Heisenberg's seminal 1925 paper initiating quantum mechanics marked] one of the great jumps - perhaps the greatest - in the development of twentieth century physics. — Abraham Pais

For all its flaws, 'The Hands of Orlac' really is a seminal film, and if you're partial to that particular B-movie subgenre of Demon Body Parts, you really ought to see it. — Kage Baker

If there's a seminal discovery in oncology in the last 20 years, it's that idea that cancer genes are often mutated versions of normal genes. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

The notebooks of Paul Brunton represent the acme of wisdom on the nature of human spirituality. Every serious student of this subject will profit enormously by becoming acquainted with Brunton's seminal work. — Kenneth Ring

Medical journals from 1905 to 1915 are rife with articles on "vibratory massage" and the many things it cures. Weakened hearts and floating kidneys. Hysterical cramp of the esophagus and catarrh of the inner ear. Deafness, cancer, bad eyesight. And lots and lots of prostate problems. A Dr. Courtney W. Shropshire, writing in 1912, was impressed to note that by means of "a special prostatic applicator, well lubricated, attached to the vibrator, introduced to the rectum" he was "able to empty the seminal vesicles of their secretions." Indeedy. Shropshire's patients returned every other day for treatment, no doubt also developing a relationship with the vibration machine. — Mary Roach

Little Asher Lev was the juncture point of two significant family lines, the apex, as it were, of a triangle seminal with Jewish potentiality and freighted with Jewish responsibility. But he was also born with a gift. — Chaim Potok

In 1975, Richard Doll and Bruce Armstrong published a seminal analysis of diet and cancer, in which they noted that, the higher the sugar intake in different nations, the higher both the incidence of and mortality from cancer of the colon, rectum, breast, ovary, uterus, prostate, kidney, nervous system, and testicles. — Gary Taubes

Many of the seminal social issues of our time - poverty, lack of education, human trafficking, war and torture, domestic abuse - can track their way to our theology of, or beliefs about, women, which has its roots in what we believe about the nature, purposes, and character of God. — Sarah Bessey

He recommended I read the book Words That Work, written by Republican political strategist Frank Luntz. It's brilliant. Matt added, "If someone likes that book, then I might point them to George Lakoff. He has a great seminal work from the 1980s called Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things." He loves books about framing and language. — Timothy Ferriss

People who overhaul their lives, there are no seminal moments or life-altering disasters. There are simply communities - sometimes of just one other person - who make change believable. One — Charles Duhigg

Sex contains all, Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations, Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk; All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, All the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth, All the governments, judges, gods, follow'd persons of the earth, These are contain'd in sex, as parts of itself, and justifications of itself. — Walt Whitman

Alexander the Macedonian and his groom by death were brought to the same state; for either they were received among the same seminal principles of the universe, or they were alike dispersed among the atoms. Consider — Marcus Aurelius

Read at a time when everything feels intense, seminal, and like you're the first person to discover it, freshman year of college, Carol Gilligan's 'In a Different Voice' made my hair stand on end with awe. — Emma McLaughlin

I guess the most seminal moment going early way back was my father died when I was 3 years old. I was raised by my grandparents, and my mother went back and got a degree. — Ram Shriram

That piece has been choreographed so badly so many times. I'm loathe to do it but I may eventually because it is one of the seminal art works of the twentieth century. — Mark Morris

Over time, it is all too common for people to lose touch with their heritage, as the thrill and immediacy of the present crowds out the echoes and lessons of the past. It would be a shame if that were to happen with respect to the fur trade. It is a seminal part of who we are as a nation, and how we came to be. — Eric Jay Dolin

I took the obligatory economics classes in school, but I've long been a fan of the Milton Friedman philosophy and its libertarian bent: One must be free to do what one wants to do, as long as you don't harm another. This is the seminal treatise on free-market economics. — Charlie Trotter

Fuck the drug war. Dropping acid was a profound turning point for me, a seminal experience. I make no apologies for it. More people should do acid. It should be sold over the counter. — George Carlin

McIntosh is persuasive in his arguments that the scientific facts of evolution cannot stand alone ... science shows that historical evolution, whatever its contingencies, is itself on a trajectory of values development. McIntosh has well-researched his sources and integrated them with seminal insight. — Holmes Rolston III

Alyosha-Bob and I have an interesting hobby that we indulge whenever possible. We think of ourselves as The Gentlemen Who Like To Rap. Our oeuvre stretches from the old school jams of Ice Cube, Ice-T, and Public Enemy to the sensuous contemporary rhythyms of ghetto tech, a hybrid of Miami bass, Chicago ghetto tracks, and Detroit electronica. The modern reader may be familiar with 'Ass-N-Titties' by DJ Assault, perhaps the seminal work of the genre — Gary Shteyngart

America's 'social contract' is equal opportunity ... yet we have failed in achieving that seminal goal. — George Kaiser

I didn't know anything about '12 Years a Slave.' Not the book, not Solomon Northup, which I was quite shocked by, once I'd read it, that it wasn't a seminal text. I think it deserves to be. — Chiwetel Ejiofor

I have no desire whatsoever to desecrate the grave of seminal Manchester pop group the Stone Roses. — John Squire

Most people don't do something seminal. I've done it twice: with my tent and my bed. Picasso did it with Cubism. — Tracey Emin

The two basic social identities were Normal and Greaser; although a few sophisticated girls wore peace signs, hippies didn't exist, and while a seminal punk band, Iggy and the Stooges, was playing in nearby Ann Arbor, punk didn't exist yet, either. — Mary Gaitskill

The Dead Hand, yeah, it was, like, seminal, but tame by today's standards. Violet, for instance, did not get her intestines ripped out. There wasn't any torture, nobody's liver got fried in a pan, there wasn't any gang rape. So what's the fun of that? — Margaret Atwood

Intelligence and rationalism are not in themselves revolutionary. But technical thinking is foreign to all social traditions: the machine has no tradition. One of Karl Marx's seminal sociological discoveries is that technology is the true revolutionary principle, beside which all revolutions based on natural law are antiquated forms of recreation. A society built exclusively on progressive technology would thus be nothing but revolutionary; but it would soon destroy itself and its technology. — Carl Schmitt

Sex that's planned like a business transaction is a turnoff for me ... Listen to yourself. Why even call it a fuck? Why not be clear and call it a seminal emission in a pre-approved orifice? (Eva to Gideon) — Sylvia Day

Consent of the Networked will become the seminal book firmly establishing the responsibility of those who control the architecture and the politics of the network to the citizens who inhabit our new digital world. Consent of the Networked should be required reading for all of those involved in building our networked future as well as those who live in it. — Joichi Ito

Hebb place the Law of Effect at the synaptic level by proposing a correlation model of synaptic modification similar to that of Hayek (1952). This work was seminal in providing a basis for many subsequent theoretical studies . — Gerald Edelman

'Harold and Maude' was a seminal movie for me because it's not only a beautiful love story, but it's also about the moment when misfits find each other. — Stephen Chbosky

I've worked really hard. I've made three pieces of seminal art in my life. If I died tomorrow, I'd be remembered for making them. There are a lot of artists who, no matter how hard they work in their lives, will never make anything seminal. — Tracey Emin

There's a phrase in Shakespeare: he refers to it as the 'hidden imposthume', and this idea of a hidden swelling is seminal to cancer. But even in more contemporary writing it's called 'the big C'. — Siddhartha Mukherjee