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		"Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round." Black Elk (1863-1950), Native American elder

2		"Scientists confirm with formulas what ancient seers knew through revelation: that the world's patterns and cycles are harmonious when seen as mathematical relationships…Where we see 'things', nouns and discrete objects, the ancient mathematical philosophers saw PROCESSES, verbs, transforming patterns meshed harmoniously."

3		"'Harmony' (from the Greek 'harmonia', signifying 'fitting together') in music, as elsewhere in the cosmos, comes from the reconciliation of opposites by a third element, bringing them all a new unity."

4		"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."

5		"Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy laws my services are bound." William Shakespeare

6		"Looking at a circle is like looking into a mirror. We create and respond irresistibly to circles, cylinders, and spheres because we recognize ourselves in them. The message of the shape bypasses our conscious mental circuitry and speaks directly to the quiet intelligence of our deepest being. The circle is a reflection of the world's – and our own – deep perfection, unity, design excellence, wholenes, and divine nature."

7		"Studying, contemplating, and living in agreement with universal principles is a social responsibility and can be a spiritual path. It is becoming clear that when we cooperate with nature's ways we succeed; when we resist, we struggle. Implications for our environmental crises are obvious."

8		"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."

9		"The ancients were aware of nature's geometric language and purposefully employed it in their arts, crafts, architecture, philosophy, myth, natural science, religion, and structures of society from prehistoric times through the Renaissance. The world today needs scholars and researchers who give the ancients credit for their intelligence and understanding, to view their art and entire cultures in light of its mathematical symbolism."

10		"A circle [is] the traditional symbol of heaven, wholeness, and unity."

11		"Men must be aware of the wisdom and the strength that is in them if their understanding is to be expanded." Vauvenargues (1715-1747), French soldier, moralist

12		"It is stirring to realize that each of the physical structures of the universe is a repackaging of the others. We hold the proportions of the solar system in our hands, face, and whole body."

13		"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."

14		"The One underlies the Many."

15		"Polar tension occurs in all natural and human affairs as any opposing relationship, contrast, difference. It is at the root of our pernicious notion of separateness from each other, from nature, and from our own inherent divinity. The paradox of the Dyad (polarity) is that while it appears to separate from unity, its opposite poles remember their source and attract each other in an attempt to merge and return to that state of unity."

16		"The ancient mathematical philosophers probed into the archetypal patterns and found them in nature."

17		"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'."

18		"Oh, grant me my prayer, that I may never lose the touch of the one in the play of the many." Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Indian poet

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

20		"Cognizance of harmony in nature and mathematics attunes us to harmony at our own core."

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

22		"Human nature mirrors outer nature."

23		"The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty." Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860-1948), Scottish zoologist, classical scholar

24		"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."

25		"In nature the One circle gives rise to the Many, in the shapes and orbits of the planets, in the roundness of berries, nests, eyeballs, and the cycles of time."