Hypatia of Alexandria c. 360 – 415
Hypatia of Alexandria was a late ancient Greek-Egyptian philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer of the late fourth and early fifth centuries AD, the most prominent woman philosopher of antiquity. She taught Neoplatonic philosophy and mathematics in Alexandria, where she headed the Platonic school and counted among her pupils Christians, pagans, and city officials. Her commentaries on works by Apollonius of Perga, Diophantus, and Ptolemy are lost but were widely cited in antiquity. Caught up in a violent political and religious conflict between the bishop Cyril of Alexandria and the Roman prefect Orestes, she was murdered in 415 AD by a Christian mob. Her death has been taken in subsequent tradition as a symbol of the end of classical pagan philosophy in the late Roman world. Almost none of her own words survive in primary sources; many lines circulated online as Hypatia quotations are in fact 20th-century fabrications, addressed in the misattributions section below.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Greek-Egyptian
- Era
- Ancient
- Movements
- Platonism
Quotes that are not actually from Hypatia of Alexandria
These lines are widely circulated as Hypatia of Alexandria, but they do not appear in Hypatia of Alexandria's works. Each entry below identifies the actual source.
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“Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.”
Although universally attributed to Hypatia of Alexandria, this line is in fact from Elbert Hubbard's Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Teachers (1908), a popular American series of fictionalised biographical sketches in which Hubbard freely composed dialogue and aphorisms in the voices of his historical subjects. Almost no genuine words of Hypatia survive in primary sources; nearly every famous Hypatia quotation circulating today, including this one, originates with Hubbard rather than with Hypatia herself.
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“Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing.”
Like the previous entry, this passage is from Elbert Hubbard's 1908 Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Teachers and is not a genuine quotation from Hypatia. Hubbard's biographical sketches imagined extensive speech for his subjects in line with his own anti-clerical sensibilities; the lines in his Hypatia chapter have since circulated as authentic Hypatia quotations, especially online.
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“Men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth, often more so.”
This line, like most of the famous Hypatia quotations in modern circulation, was composed by Elbert Hubbard for his 1908 fictionalised sketch of Hypatia in Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Teachers. Hypatia's own writings are lost, and contemporary or near-contemporary sources (Damascius, Synesius of Cyrene, the Suda) preserve no direct quotations from her.