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		"Traditionally, the center is the most honorable place, known to the Greeks as 'the keep of Zeus.' Protector of hearths and boundaries (centers and circumferences) and the source of moral order, Zeus dispensed judgment from the center."

2		"God created the universe through the Breath of the Compassionate." Mohammed (ca. 570-632)

3		"The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal." William James (1842-1910), American psychologist and philosopher

4		"This knowledge of ourselves as part of a harmonious whole is now dimmed to everyday awareness, but it can be part of a great vision to be reclaimed."

5		"The One underlies the Many."

6		"The one Godhead, secret in all beings, all-pervading, the inner Self of all, presiding over all action, witness, conscious knower and absolute….the One in control over the many,… fashions one seed in many ways." Swetaswatara Upanishad

7		"Sacred space is within us…Wherever we go we bring the sacred within us to the sacred around us."

8		"The orderly process of geometric construction shows us the steps nature metaphorically uses to clothe the archetypal patterns. The geometer gradually learns to see the world of common experience as governed by laws of nature that can be understood as expressions of mathematical archetypes."

9		"The archetypal principles of number manifest themselves as forms around us. Circles and spheres, triangles, squares, pentagons, spirals, and the five Platonic volumes represent principles that shape the world."

10		"To know the order of nature, and regard the universe as orderly is the highest function of the mind." Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), Dutch philosopher

11		"A common theme in worldwide mythology is the human as microcosm, a miniature model of the whole universe…this view was long considered a key to the understanding of the Self. The ancient philosophers saw their inner lives arranged according to nature's own harmonies, for in nature, geometry, and their spiritual lives they discovered the same principles."

12		"The world is single and it came into being from the center outwards." Joannes Stobaeus (5th century), Greek anthologist

13		"Through meditation and self-contemplation we can seek a more subtle center, our higher or deeper self, the power that motivates the actions, emotions, thoughts, and desires. This center of gravity is not in space but in pure awareness, the 'place' in you now aware of these very words."

14		"In what way can a mathematical ratio permeate our souls? Through beauty. A deep part of ourselves recognizes in flowers and dancers the beauty of the mathematical infinite and sees in it the endlessness of our own depths. Natural beauty resonates with the archetypal nature within us."

15		"That's why the world is called a UNIverse (Latin for 'one turn'). No other universes exist except within this One, which Plato refers to as the 'whole of wholes'."

16		"I am One that transorms into Two…I am Two that transforms into Four…I am Four that transforms into Eight…After this I am One again." Egyptian (Hermopolitan) creation myth

17		"The manifest cosmos is an approximation of its mathematical ideal."

18		"At the center of our Self, deep within our consciousness, is a calm 'I.' Like the calm 'eye' within a storm, our center is untouched by psychological turbulence. Peaceful, it observes all from the vantage of wisdom. Placid, it is unmoved by the turbulent weather of the surrounding psyche. When you're feeling connected with your center it seems very familiar. It feels like the Self you know best, like who and what you know your Self to be, calm in knowing without thinking. To be centered is not the same as being 'self-centered' or selfish. Instead, it is identity with the deep, divine power that motivates us."

19		"The perfection of mathematical beauty is such that whatsoever is most beautiful and regular is also found to be most useful and excellent." Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

20		"Numbers keep recurring not because we make them do so but because they are inherent in the proportions of nature that express the timeless mathematical archetypes."

21		"Archetypes are universal in that they are the same to everyone everywhere and in every era."

22		"The eye is the first circle, the horizon which it forms is the second: and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end." Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American essayist and poet

23		"Number should not be understood solely as a construction of consciousness, but also as an archetype and thus as a constituent of nature both within and without." Marie Louise vonFranz

24		"Worldwide tradition acknowledges humans as being composed in accord with natural principles and made in the image of the cosmos."

25		"We experience resonance on a very personal level in our rapport with the people we know and meet… Each of us unconsciously broadcasts the energy of our inner life and receives that with which we are in tune."