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		"When I say as a psychologist that God is an archetype, I mean by that the 'type' in the psyche. The word 'type' is, as we know, derived from (the Greek word for) 'blow' or 'imprint'; thus an archetype presupposes an imprinter." 'Psychology and Alchemy' Collected Works (Carl Jung)

2		"Ideas are certain original forms or permanent and immutable models of things which are contained by the divine intelligence. They are immutable because they themselves have not been formed; and that is why they are eternal and always the same. But though they themselves neither come to be nor perish, yet it is accordfing to them that everything, which can come to be or pass away or which actually comes to be and passes away, is said to be formed." St. Augustine, Lib. 83 Quaest., q. 46 Introduction to Saint Thomas Aquinas (Anton C. Pegis, editor)

3		"Evolution systematically reveals the divine archetypes, the Ideas of Plato. Forms unfold through evolution according to the pattern impressed on them by the archetype that governs their particular structure." Ancient Wisdom, Modern Insight (Shirley Nicholson)

4		"Each god has his sympathetic representative in the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral world." Proclus (410-485ad), Greek philosopher Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works (John Farina, Editor-in-Chief)

5		"By using archetypal symbols that resonate on a universal level, art can evoke the complete range of possible life experiences, including the boundless nature of our souls." Alex Grey Experiencing the Soul (Eliot Jay Rosen, editor)

6		"I believe that on a higher level, everyone embodies the archetypal aspects of Jesus, Krishna, Mohammed, et cetera. These archetypes of our ideals serve to heal our sense of soul-loss. They help us remember a part of us that we often forget about in everyday life." Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D., 'The Soul and Quantum Physics' Experiencing the Soul (Eliot Jay Rosen, editor)

7		"When we speak of archetypal images we are not referring simply to dream images or to mythological or literary images. We are, instead, speaking of a way to respond to our ordinary lives with our imaginations, rather than only pragmatically or logically. We are speaking of a way of being in the world that is open to many dimensions of meaning, open to resonances, echoes, to associative and synchronous connections, not only causal ones. We are speaking of a world discovered to be full of sign-ificance – of signs, symbols, metaphors, images." Mirrors of The Self, Archetypal Images That Shape Your Life (Christine Downing, editor)

8		"The greatest and best thoughts of man shape themselves upon these primoridial images (the archetypes) as upon a blueprint." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

9		"The archetypes represent the uniquely human means whereby instinctual, biological energy is transformed into the meaningful symbolic life of the human psyche." J. J. Clarke The Strong Eye of Shamanism, A Journey Into the Caves of Consciousness (Robert E. Ryan, Ph.D.)

10		"Since the archetypes, or elementary ideas, are not limited in their distributions by cultural or even linguistic boundaries, they cannot be defined as culturally determined." The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Metaphor as Myth and as Religion (Joseph Campbell)

11		"Growth at all levels must include spiritual development as its most subtle and valuable aspect. The life of the spirit, manifest in the psyche, must evolve in accordance with certain principles and forms, which, in turn, must be related to all the other levels of human existence...to designate these principles and forms Jung has adopted the term 'archetypes.' Violet Staub deLaszlo, introduction Basic Writings of C G Jung (V S DeLasslo, editor)

12		"Archetypal images feel basic, necessary, and generative. They are connected to something original….They seem to give energy and direction. Archetypal images give rise to associations and lead us to other images; and we therefore experience them as having resonance, complexity, and depth. They feel universal." Mirrors of The Self, Archetypal Images That Shape Your Life (Christine Downing, editor)

13		"The primal Self contains all the archetypal potential and all the dynamic oppositions necessary to achieve the goal of individuation." Ariadne's Clue, A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind (Anthony Stevens)

14		"Ideas, by the analysis St. Anselm makes of them, are thenselves things; and for them to be is indication of something concerning the nature of things." Richard McKeon, introduction to St. Anselm Selections From Medieval Philosophers (Richard McKeon, editor and translator)

15		"The sky is moist and dry, cold and hot, bright and obscured by turns; these are the rapidly alternating forms included under the one ideal or universal form of the sky. The earth is ever passing through many changes of form; it generates produce, it nourishes the produce it has generated, it yields all manner of crops, with manifold differences of quality and quantity; and above all, it puts forth many sorts of trees, differing in the scent of their flowers and the taste of their fruits. Water takes different forms, now standing, and now running. Fire undergoes many changes, and assumes godlike forms;…they are like our mirrors, and reproduce the ideal or universal form in visible copies with rival brilliance." Hermetica (Walter Scott, translator)

16		"The Absolute or Supreme God is the basic, or final Archetype in which all lesser archetypes originate and are resolved." The Transforming Mind (Laurence and Phoebe Bendit)

17		"The sense of being in touch with something that feels collective, shared, is indeed part of what 'archetypal' connotes." Christine Downing, Prologue Mirrors of The Self, Archetypal Images That Shape Your Life (Christine Downing, editor)

18		"According to the Ancient Wisdom, the world issues by means of archetypes, the Divine Ideas or forms of Plato. These are nonmaterial matrices or guiding fields, geometric in nature, which shape forms from within." Ancient Wisdom, Modern Insight (Shirley Nicholson)

19		"They (the Archetypes) are, indeed, an instinctive trend, as marked as the impulse of birds to build nests, or ants to form organized colonies." Carl Jung Man and His Symbols (Carl Jung)

20		"Archetypal images provide us with a 'self-portrait' of the psyche." Mirrors of The Self, Archetypal Images That Shape Your Life (Christine Downing, editor)

21		"The fact is that with the knowledge and actual experience of these inner images [archetypes] a way is opened for reason and feeling to gain access to those other images which the teachings of religion offer to mankind." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

22		"Symbols, images, and archetypes…are the key regulators and main 'switches' of human consciousness and of one's inner life. It is through them that all alterations, focusing, and expansion of human consciousness take place, for they are the regulators, accumulators, and transformers of human consciousness. They enable a person to connect himself (and his field of consciousness) temporarily and to identify with something greater and larger than he is and, thus, slowly to transcend himself and actualize his latent energies, faculties, and potentialitites." Divine Light and Fire, Experiencing Esoteric Christianity (Peter Roche deCoppens)

23		"The ancient mathematical philosophers probed into the archetypal patterns and found them in nature." A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science (Michael S. Schneider)

24		"I understand that there arise and are made in me, when I seek them out earnestly, certain ideas like intelligible species, of the intelligibles within, which I contemplate with the mind alone." John Scotus Eriugena (800?-877?), 'On The Division of Nature', Selections From Medieval Philosophers (Richard McKeon, editor and translator)

25		"The word 'archetype' is derived from the Greek prefix which signifies a first or primal cause….The word is best taken for the numinous or abstract principle behind any thing or group of things in the phenomenal world. Being thus Numinous or Essential, it is not extended in space-time, but is what we would call a mathematical point with neither size or time-extension." The Transforming Mind (Laurence and Phoebe Bendit)