This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The "morphogenic" relationship of eternity to time is not to be thought of as sequential. Moreover, eternity being by definition outside or beyond temporality, transcendent of all categories, whether of virtue or of reason (being and nonbeing, unity and multiplicity, love and justice, forgiveness and wrath), the term and concept "God" is itself but a metaphor of the unknowing mind, connotative, not only beyond itself, but beyond thought... metaphors are equivalent as alternative signs of the high mystical experience of an absorption of mortal appearance in immortal being; for which another historical figure of speech is the "End of the World."" - Joseph Campbell
"Marriage is the union of two divinities that a third might be born on earth. It is the union of two souls in a strong love for the abolishment of separateness. It is that higher unity which fuses the separate unites within the two spirits. It is the golden ring in a chain whose beginning is a glance, and whose ending is Eternity." - Kahlil Gibran
"Only one thing can give unity in the Church on the human level: the love which allows another to be different even when it does not understand him." - Karl Rahner
"I am going to venture that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures, and acknowledging unity with the universe of things was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization." - Luther Standing Bear, aka Ota Kte or Mochunozhin
"The perception of one’s fellow man as a whole, as a unity, as a unique – even if his wholeness, unity, and uniqueness are only partly developed, as is usually the case – is opposed in our time by almost everything that is commonly understood as specifically modern. In our time there predominates an analytical, reductive, and deriving look between man and man. This look is analytical, or rather pseudo-analytical, since it treats the whole being as put together and therefore able to be taken apart… An effort is being made today radically to destroy the mystery between man and man. The personal life, the ever-near mystery, once the source of the stillest enthusiasms, is leveled down." - Martin Buber
"There is not one realm of spirit and another of nature; there is only the growing realm of God. God is not spirit, but what we call spirit and what we call nature hail equally from the God who is beyond and equally conditioned by both, and whose kingdom reaches its fullness in the complete unity of spirit and nature." - Martin Buber
"Sweet, amongst brethren is the love of unity." - Menander, aka Menander of Athens NULL
"A deeper satisfaction lies in honoring universal ethical values, that is, values that people everywhere believe should inform behavior. That unity between principled belief and honorable behavior is the foundation for real happiness." - Michael S. Josephson
"Freedom without responsibility is destructive, unity without individual initiative stifling, and equality that does not recognize differences is demoralizing." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"The most essential requirement for a happy marriage is soul unity - similarity of spiritual ideals and goals, implemented by a practical willingness to attain those goals by study, effort, and self-discipline." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"In the ultimate depth of being, we find ourselves no longer separate but, rather, part of the unity of the universe. That unity includes the sufferer and the suffering, and the healer and that which heals. Therefore, all acts of healing are ultimately our selves healing our Self." - Ram Dass, aka Baba Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert
"We have in the notion of God absolute immensity, simplicity, and a unity that embraces all other attributes; and of this idea we find no example in us." - René Descartes
"There is no distinction between Thy divinity, Thy unity, Thy eternity, and Thy existence; for it is all one mystery." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist. When thought objects vanish, the thinking-subject vanishes, as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish. Things are objects because there is a subject or mind; and the mind is a subject because there are objects. Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality; the unity of emptiness. In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable and each contains in itself the whole world. If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion." - Sosan Zenji, aka Chien-chih Seng-Tsan or Ch'an Seng-ts'an
"Creating the unity to run an effective business or a family or a marriage requires great personal strength and courage. No amount of technical administrative skill in laboring for the masses can make up for lack of nobility of personal character in developing relationships. It is a t a very essential, one-on-one level, that we live the primary laws of love and life." - Stephen Covey, fully Stephen Richards Covey
"In love is found the secret of divine unity." - Zohar or The Zohar, literally "Splendor or Radiance" NULL
"A great scholar, in the highest sense of the term, is not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination; bringing together from the four winds, like the Angel of the Resurrection, what else were dust from dead men’s bones, into the unity of breathing life." - Thomas De Quincey, fully Thomas Penson De Quincey
"Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision and heroism. When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
"Piety is unity, and the final proof that we have really found God is that all the discordant elements in our life fall into place and we are at peace." - William Adams Brown
"Though God is everywhere present, yet He is only present to thee in the deepest and most central part of thy soul. the natural senses cannot possess God or unite thee to Him; nay, thy inward faculties of understanding, will and memory can only reach after God, but cannot be the place of his habitation in thee. But there is a root or depth of thee from whence all these faculties come forth, as lines from a centre, or as branches from the body of the tree. This depth is the unity, the eternity - I had almost said the infinity - of thy soul; for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy it or give it rest but the infinity of God." - William Law
"When the mystic enters into the pure and absolute unicity of the One and into the kingdom of the One and Alone, mortals reach the end of their ascent. For there is no ascent beyond it, since ascent involves multiplicity, and implies an ascent from somewhere to somewhere, and when multiplicity has been eliminated, unity is established and relationships ceases, signs are effaced, there remains neither height nor depth, nor anyone to descend or ascend. No higher ascent is possible for the soul, for there is no height beyond the highest and no multiplicity in the face of unity, and since multiplicity has been effaced, no further ascent." - Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali
"Good is that which makes for unity; Evil is that which makes for separateness." - Aldous Leonard Huxley
"Everything above and below is one unity." - Baal Shem Tov, given name Yisroel ben Eliezer
"The man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization. And when native man left off this form of development, his humanization was retarded in growth." - Chief Luther Standing Bear
"A family which allows one of its members to die without being wept for shows by that very fact that it lacks moral unity and cohesion; it abdicates, it renounces its existence." - Émile Durkheim, fully David Émile Durkheim
"Life is inherent in cosmic forces, and as we live and think, so the Universe responds to us. This is prayer, with our life fields or auras carrying an electrical charge to attract negative ions to us and be more stimulated. In this way our life fields remain positively charged and attract the negative particles or ions. This is the secret of life. Retaining communication and unity with the Universe ... our Galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy … which is energy in harmonic interaction with neighboring galaxies and galaxies beyond into inter-galactic space … ad infinitum … where wave patterns create harmonic chords that can be read like a score of music … and the illusion of matter strung together with electromagnetic and nuclear forces of light." - Elizabeth Klarer
"The unity in productive (creative) work is not interpersonal; the unity achieved in orgiastic fusion is transitory; the unity achieved by conformity is only pseudo-unity. Hence they are only partial answers to the problem of existence. The full answer lies in the achievement of interpersonal union, of fusion with another person, in love. " - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"I believe that the unity of man as opposed to other living things derives from the fact that man is the conscious life of himself. Man is conscious of himself, of his future, which is death, of his smallness, of his impotence; he is aware of others as others; man is in nature, subject to its laws even if he transcends it with his thought." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"I believe that man is the product of natural evolution that is born from the conflict of being a prisoner and separated from nature, and from the need to find unity and harmony with it." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"I believe that the man choosing progress can find a new unity through the full development of all his human forces, which are produced in three orientations. These can be presented separately or together: biophilia, love for humanity and nature, and independence and freedom." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety. " - Felix Mendelssohn, fully Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
"The most important characteristic of the Eastern world view - one could almost say the essence of it- is the awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things and events, the experience of all phenomena in the world as manifestations of a basic oneness. All things are seen as interdependent and inseparable parts of this cosmic whole; as different manifestations of the same ultimate reality." - Fritjof Capra
"In ordinary life, we are not aware of the unity of all things, but divide the world into separate objects and events. This division is useful and necessary to cope with our everyday environment, but it is not a fundamental feature of reality. It is an abstraction devised by our discriminating and categorising intellect. To believe that our abstract concepts of separate ‘things’ and ‘events’ are realities of nature is an illusion." - Fritjof Capra
"The life of God — the life which the mind apprehends and enjoys as it rises to the absolute unity of all things — may be described as a play of love with itself; but this idea sinks to an edifying truism, or even to a platitude, when it does not embrace in it the earnestness, the pain, the patience, and labor, involved in the negative aspect of things." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"Matter possesses gravity in virtue of its tendency towards a central point. It is essentially composite; consisting of parts that exclude each other. It seeks its Unity; and therefore exhibits itself as self-destructive, as verging towards its opposite ... Spirit, on the contrary, may be defined as that which has its centre in itself. It has not a unity outside itself, but has already found it; it exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of itself; Spirit is self-contained existence." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"Under certain given circumstances, and only under those circumstances, an agglomeration of men presents new characteristics very different from those of the individuals composing it. The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics. The gathering has thus become what, in the absence of a better expression, I will call an organized crowd, or, if the term is considered preferable, a psychological crowd. It forms a single being and is subject to the law of the mental unity of crowds." - Gustave Le Bon
"Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is." - Hans Urs von Balthasar
"The great unity which true science seeks is found only by beginning with our knowledge of God, and coming down from Him along the stream of causation to every fact and event that affects us." - Howard Crosby
"Beware of the differences that blind us to the unity that binds us. " - Huston Smith, fully Huston Cummings Smith
"The human mind, if it is to keep its sanity, must maintain the nicest balance between unity and plurality. " - Irving Babbitt
"For, as I have suggested, disruption of the unity of the self is not limited to the cases that come to physicians and institutions for treatment. They accompany every disturbance of normal relations of husband and wife, parent and child, group and group, class and class, nation and nation. Emotional responses are so total as compared with the partial nature of intellectual responses, of ideas and abstract conceptions, that their consequences are more pervasive and enduring. I can, accordingly, think of nothing of greater practical importance than the psychic effects of human relationships, normal and abnormal, should be the object of continues study, including among the consequences the indirect somatic effects." - John Dewey
"Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown. It is not possible that this unity of knowledge,feelings,and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago;rather,this knowledge,feeling, and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all people,nay in all sensitive beings. " - Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
"A language possesses utility only insofar as it can construct conventional boundaries. A language of no boundaries is no language at all, and thus the mystic who tries to speak logically and formally of unity consciousness is doomed to sound very paradoxical or contradictory. The problem is that the structure of any language cannot grasp the nature of unity consciousness, any more than a fork could grasp the ocean." - Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II
"We are not sent into this world to walk it in solitude. We are born to love, as we are born to breathe and eat and drink. The babe is hardly separated from his mother’s womb before he stretches out a tiny clasping hand, and from that time forth he will constantly stretch out to touch the world that lies about him and the folk that dwell therein. The purpose of our growth in life is to bring us into unity with the universe into which we are born, to make us aware that we are not lonely individual meteors hurtling blindly through an abysmal dark, but living parts of a living whole. As we grow we learn to love more and more: first ourselves; then the family within the small kingdom of the home; then the school, the wider circle of friends, the home community, the college, and the still wider community of the nation; and finally, the greatest country of all, which has no boundaries this side of Hell, and perhaps not even there. In some this process of enlargement is arrested at an intermediate stage, and then love turns in upon itself and becomes sour. Some have never truly loved anything but themselves - perhaps because their first outreachings were received with coldness and lack of sympathy and then love quickly turns putrid, and becomes greed, and lust, and turns even to self- disgust. Some confine their love to the narrow limits of the family, and then too love decays into sentimentality, or hardens into indifference. The couple that are wrapped up in themselves soon find the parcel uncomfortably tight; the mother who pours out her love on her child till both are smothered in a cocoon of sentiment soon tastes the bitter worm of ingratitude and ruins the very object of her love. There are few more depressing spectacles than the perennial “old grad,” who has never broken the bonds of collegiate enthusiasm or developed beyond the throaty lore of Alma Matriolatry. And the present day provides us with the awful spectacle of what an ingrown love of country can do, what fanatical hatreds and cruelties it can engender, and how again it can destroy the very object of its love." - Kenneth Boulding, fully Kenneth Ewart Boulding
"Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things." - Dōgen, aka Dōgen Kigen, Eihei Dōgen, titled as Dōgen Zenji NULL
"A set is a unity of which its elements are the constituents. It is a fundamental property of the mind to comprehend multitudes into unities. Sets are multitudes which are also unities. A multitude is the opposite of a unity. How can anything be both a multitude and a unity? Yet a set is just that. It is a seemingly contradictory fact that sets exist. It is surprising that the fact that multitudes are also unities leads to no contradictions: this is the main fact of mathematics. Thinking a plurality together seems like a triviality: and this appears to explain why we have no contradiction. But “many things for one” is far from trivial." - Kurt Gödel, also Goedel
"Whole and unity; thing or entity or being. Every whole is a unity and every unity that is divisible is a whole. For example, the primitive concepts, the monads, the empty set, and the unit sets are unities but not wholes. Every unity is something and not nothing. Any unity is a thing or an entity or a being. Objects and concepts are unities and beings." - Kurt Gödel, also Goedel