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		"The beginning of a cure for our ills is a revitalized imagination, one that truly recognizes that there is a sacred dimension to the everyday life that we live." Thomas Moore Angels: The Mysterious Messengers (Rex Hauck, editor)

2		"Imagination is the universal and indispensable instrument of all levels of living in the human world. Our daily lives are dependent on it….In fact, the principal function of the imagination is to enable the human being constantly to build thought models of the real world." Imagination (Harold Rugg)

3		"The imaginative mind has marvelous access to other realms of reality. The point is not whether or not we are making things up, but instead, that if we can imagine it, some aspect of it exists – 'As above, so below.'" God Is A Verb, Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism (Rabbi David A. Cooper)

4		"The imagination is able to look beyond the mundane image to the Reality itself." Karen Armstrong The Schocken Book of Jewish Mystical Testimonies (Louis Jacobs, Compiler)

5		"The invisible replies and materializes in the form in which it is summoned and imagined." Gerald Heard (1889-1971), English author and philosopher, 'The Third Morality' The Choice Is Always Ours (Dorothy B. Phillips, Chief Editor)

6		"The Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself." William Blake (1757-1827) Wisdom for Life (Lynette Evans, editor)

7		"The extremest resources of the imagination are called in to lay open the deepest movements of the heart." William Hazlitt The Empathic Imagination (Alfred Margulies, M.D.)

8		"Imagine God beyond all beings, yet all beings and being itself." The Center of the Cyclone: An Autobiography of Inner Space (John C. Lilly, M.D.)

9		"We all work near and drink from the same reservoir of imagination that forms from our collective creativity." Breaking the Mind Barrier (Todd Siler)

10		"Increase of imagination is always an increase in soul." Care of the Soul (Thomas Moore)

11		"Our imaginations are holy, the Holy Spirit works through us when we create and participate in the ongoing Creation of self, society, universe, and mind." One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from World Faiths (Matthew Fox)

12		"Of all the ways in which we try to picture the world, that one alone is real which most completely satisfies our thirst for unity." Science and Christ (Pierre Teilhard deChardin)

13		"Imagination is like the Sun, the light of which is not tangible, but which can set a house on fire. Imagination leads man's life. If he thinks of fire, he is on fire; if he thinks of war, he will cause war. All depends only upon man's imagination to be Sun, i.e., that he imagines wholly that which he wills." Paracelsus The History of Magic and the Occult (Kurt Seligmann)

14		"You instantly color physical experience and nature itself with the tints of your unique imaginative processes." The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events (Jane Roberts)

15		"Each soul has an Image in which it can contemplate itself, and so at last resurrect itself." Omens of Millennium (Harold Bloom)

16		"The imagination can, by a process of identification, extend the self out into the world and into other people. The result is….a fusing of the two." J. Engell, 'The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism' The Empathic Imagination (Alfred Margulies, M.D.)

17		"There exists in the human mind a prefiguration of reality, an interior imagery of nature." A God Within (Rene Dubos)

18		"Depth psychologies have recognised the dimension of the imaginary as one of vital value, as of primordial importance to the human being as a whole. Imaginary experience is constitutive of man, no less certainly than everyday experience and practical activities." Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities (Mircea Eliade)

19		"The activity of the imagination does not resemble a static picture but rather it is closer to a kind of 'play' that includes a subtle orchestration of feelings, as well as a sense of intention and will. Imagination is thus the beginning of the entry of creative perception into the domain of the manifest. Moreover, since form is defined by proportion and ratio, the imagination must also possess these in some implicit or enfolded sense. Intuitive or perceptive reason is the act, then, of making explicit the ratio or proportion that is already implicit in creative imagination." Science, Order, and Creativity, A Dramatic New Look at the Creative Roots of Science and Life (David Bohm and F. David Peat)

20		"I am indeed convinced that creative imagination is the only primordial phenomenon accessible to us, the real Ground of the psyche." C. G. Jung: Letters, 1906-1950 (Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffe, editors)

21		"The image is a principle of our knowledge. It is that from which our intellectual activity begins, not as a passing stimulus, but as an enduring foundation…An image implies the idea of origin." Thomas Aquinas, 'Commentary on Boethius's The Trinity', vi, 2, ad 5, & I, q. 35, a. 1 Sheer Joy, Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality (Matthew Fox)

22		"Imagine, if you will, a time when human beings lived in intimacy with God, and so with all other living beings and with one another. Imagine, then, that humankind emerged and separated itself from God, and from intimacy with other living beings. Imagine further that in their separateness, individuals imagined themselves as autonomous beings, distant not only from God but from their own common humanity. Imagine, finally, that these autonomous individuals were to rediscover their common humanity, their connections to other living beings – and eventually reuinite with God. This could be the story of the religions of the West. It could also…be the story of the religions of India. It might, perhaps, even be the story of the world. In that case, it would be the story of stories, the myth of all myths – and no less true for that." The Book of Miracles (Kenneth L. Woodward)

23		"Certain basic images are universal. From culture to culture, they may vary somewhat in surface details, or content, but in underlying form they are basically the same. These include the archetypes of figures such as the Hero, the Wise Old Man, the Great Mother, the Self, the Sun-God, the Demon, and events such as Birth, Death, the Initiation Rite, the Sacred Marriage." The Sphinx and The Rainbow: Brain, Mind and Future Vision (David Loye)

24		"There is no power on earth like imagination." Laurens van der Post, 'Venture to the Interior' Macmillan Dictionary of Religious Quotations (Margaret Pepper, editor)

25		"Imagination is a kind of mediator, opening the way to the activity of the intelligible and spiritual life of the human being." Ramon Lull and the Secret of Life (Amador Vega)