Many / One

A database of 11,000+ illuminated guiding quotations in 40 categories from 600+ inspired books by our most brilliant and influential authors.
Compiled by JoAnn Kite

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1		"It is now, all at once, one, continuous….Nor is it divisible more here and less there….but it is full of what is." Heraclitus, Fragment 8

2		"We only establish knowledge about something through its relation to something else. Language, images, symbols, formulae, measurement, observation are all products of analogos, for the human mind has the tendency to register, understand, and recall events in terms of the similarities to, and differences from, other events. The mind is, from this point of view, an instrument for making analogical models; that is to say it is an instrument whereby one thing may see itself reflected in another – which is, in a certain sense, a way to describe love." Robert Lawlor, 'Ancient Temple Architecture'

3		"Our bodies and minds, their architecture, processes and energies, could not be other than those of the universe that we observe, image and experience. Body, Mind and Universe must be in a parallel, formative identity. From this point of view, 'Man know thyself' was the principle of ancient science, as it is also coming to be in ultra-modern science." Robert Lawlor, 'Ancient Temple Architecture'

4		"Heraclitus used the word 'logos' to refer to the underlying organizational principle of the universe – the ultimate whole experience – through which 'all things are one'." Keith Critchlow, 'The Platonic Tradition'

5		"The [Greek] Stoics used the Heraclitean concept of an all-pervasive universal principle, which they considered to be divine." Keith Critchlow, 'The Platonic Tradition'

6		"That the Universe is a living being with soul and spirit is a traditional doctrine expressed more or less in all revelations." Keith Critchlow, 'Twelve Criteria for Sacred Architecture'

7		"In reality everything is a simultaneity of interconnected relationships." Robert Lawlor, 'Ancient Temple Architecture'

8		"The cosmos is spiritually based and our human species shares in the divine." Arthur G. Zajonc, contemporary physicist, 'The Two Lights'

9		"Every event is connected to every other event." Robert Lawlor, 'Ancient Temple Architecture'

10		"If one wants to know of the most elevating, inspired and 'energetic' revelations that have been expressed through the human vehicle, it is to the Scriptures of the world that one has to turn. They have moved millions of people through thousands of years and have left legacies of elevative energy in the form of the great sages, sagas, music, painting, objects and architecture, and not less the profoundly healthy agricultural and medical systems based on co-operation." Keith Critchlow, 'What Is Sacred in Architecture?"

11		"Mind has the possibility of seeing itself reflected in the forms and symbols to which it gives birth. Its words and numbers, forms and images, are metaphors describing itself, and so are our most powerful tools for penetrating into its actions and modes." Robert Lawlor, 'Ancient Temple Architecture'

12		"The mind is drawn quite naturally to the ideal of Truth; the heart or our values, is quite naturally drawn to the ideal of Beauty; the guts or will is quite naturally drawn to the ideal of the Good." Keith Critchlow, 'Twelve Criteria for Sacred Architecture'

13		"The universe is of one piece – it is a 'one only': one humanity, one nature, one universe, one God."

14		"The human world, particularly as understood in the inspiring philosophy and ideals of a sacred tradition, is essentially about 'lifting up'. As all life draws up to the light, so is the human psyche attracted to the elevating principles which act as constant regenerators to the forms and beings of our world." Keith Critchlow, 'What Is Sacred in Architecture?"

15		"To societies rooted in the Sacred, that is, in the ideals by which the greatest majority of humankind live and have lived over the greatest majority of the life of the human family, the created order is sacred." Keith Critchlow, 'What Is Sacred in Architecture?",

16		"Cosmos is much more than just the universe. It includes the idea of beauty, order or goodness, and structural perfection which we might call truth. All of these are held together by the prior principle of unity, which, manifesting as Cosmos – one mass of Life and Consciousness as the 'Corpus Hermeticum' will say – becomes a teaching of the harmony, sympathy and kinship of all things." Christopher Bamford, Introduction

17		"Both as a principle of unity and a model of the cosmos, the sphere represents the ultimate undivided, undifferentiated whole." Keith Chritchlow, 'Twelve Criteria for Sacred Architecture'

18		"As Plato teaches in the 'Timaeus', the universe is one single, visible living being." Christopher Bamford, introduction

19		"The visible form is a nucleus in a spectral nest of related fields which resonate and conduct the information which controls the self-organization and development of the form. Each formation or morphic unit results from the organizational capacity of the morphic field, and each form reciprocally contributes to the continuation (nourishment) of that field." Robert Lawlor, 'Pythagorean Number as Form, Color, and Light'

20		"Dante said, 'The elements of all things that Nature begins, whatever be their mode, observe an inner order. It is this Form that makes the Universe resemble God.'" Robert Lawlor, 'Pythagorean Number as Form, Color, and Light'

21		"Wisdom is one and unique – to know the intelligence by which all things are steered through all things." Heraclitus, Fragment 32

22		"All things that are ever said to be consist of a one and a many." Plato, 'Philebus'

23		"Total healthiness comes from wholeness, which is holiness. This resonance enables a consonance to sound from microcosm through mesocosm to macrocosm, and is the root and secret to finding unity and the unified experience." Keith Critchlow, 'What Is Sacred in Architecture?"

24		"the whole world is the outward form of universal reason." Rumi, 'The Masnavi'

25		"There is a teleological message contained in the image of the spiral; for it moves in successively opposite directions towards the ultimate expression of both the infinitely expanded and the infinitely contracted. The spiral is constantly approaching these two incomprehensible aspects of the ultimate reality, and therefore symbolizes a universe moving toward the perfect singularity from which it arose." Robert Lawlor, 'Ancient Temple Architecture'