Many / One

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The Great Ideas, A Syntopicon, vol. 1
Mortimer J. Adler, editor

1 "From self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences, as incontestible as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out, to any one that will apply himself with the same indifferency and attention to the one as he does to the other of these sciences." John Locke (1629-1695)

2 "If we attentively consider the constant regularity, order, and concatenation of natural things, the surprising magnificence, beauty, and perfection of the larger, and the exquisite contrivance of the smaller parts of the creation, together with the exact harmony and correspondence of the whole,….I say if we consider all these things, and at the same time attend to the meaning and import of the attributes, one, eternal, infinitely wise, good, and perfect, we shall clearly perceive that they belong to the Spirit who 'works all in all', and 'by whom all things consist.'" George Berkeley (1685-1745), 'The Principles of Human Knowledge'

3 "Nothing is future to God. Everything that has ever happened or ever will is simultaneously together in the eternal present of the divine vision."

4 "The successive phases of Spirit that animate the Nations…are themselves only steps in the development of the one Universal Spirit, which through them elevates and completes itself to a self-comprehending totality." Georg Hegel (1770-1831),

5 "The ancient philosophers, constrained as it were by the truth, when they asserted an infinite principle, asserted likewise that there was only one such principle." Thomas Aquinas

6 "Love is all opposites – the only reality."

7 "Whatever the soul possesses, to that she comes bearing life." Socrates, quoted in Plato's 'Phaedo'

8 "Justice is esential to the very life and health of the soul."

9 "Every act of understanding or thought involves imagination."

10 "Providence connects each one with its proper order." Boethius, quoted by Thomas Aquinas

11 "The moral law is universally and equally binding on all persons….the moral law commands us to respect the dignity of the human person, ourselves and others alike,"

12 "God…is intimately present to our minds, producing in them all that variety of ideas or sensations which continually affect us." George Berkeley (1685-1753), 'The Principles of Human Knowledge'

13 "Spirit is immortal; with it there is no past, no future, but an essential now. This necessarily implies that the present form of Spirit comprehends within it all earlier steps….The grades which Spirit seems to have left behind it, it still possesses in the depths of its present." Georg Hegel (1770-1831),

14 "Although the essences or forms of things are many, yet the truth of the divine intellect is one." Thomas Aquinas

15 "Spinoza defines God as 'Being absolutely infinite, that is to say, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence."

16 "A natural teleology seems to imply that every natural thing is governed by an indwelling form working toward a definite end, and that the whole of nature exhibits the working out of a divine plan or design."

17 "Human kingdoms are established by divine providence." St. Augustine

18 "In the view of Nicolas of Cusa, the mystery of God's infinity is best expressed by affirming that in God all contradictions are somehow reconciled."

19 "Only God, only an infinite being, can satisfy man's infinite craving for all the good there is."

20 "Man's nature as a social being tends to make him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures."

21 "In the realm of Being, the trace of The One establishes reality: existence is a trace of The One." Plotinus

22 "Whatever exists...has some share in the effulgent beauty of the One."

23 "The absolute good is, as in the 'Divine Comedy', the final cause or ultimate end of the motions of the universe. It is 'the Alpha and Omega', Dante says, 'of every scripture that Love reads to me.'"

24 "The good of nothing less than the whole collectively or of all distributively can be taken as the common or general good."

25 "The ancients did not doubt that men could choose and, through choice, exercise some control over the disposition of their lives. Tacitus, for example…claims that 'the wisest of the ancients leave us the capacity of choosing our life."

This body of quotes compiled by JoAnn Kite