Philo of Alexandria Quotes
Philo of Alexandria was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who synthesized the Hebrew scriptures with Greek philosophical thought, especially Platonism and Stoicism. He developed an allegorical method of reading the Pentateuch in which the literal text encodes deeper philosophical and ethical meanings. The quotes below are attributed to Philo of Alexandria, organized by topic.
Browse Philo of Alexandria by topic
Philo of Alexandria on Death
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“Are you making war upon us, because you anticipate that we will not endure such indignity, but that we will fight on behalf of our laws, and die in defence of our national customs? For you cannot possibly have been ignorant of what was likely to result from your attempt to introduce these innovations respecting our temple.”
Embassy to Gaius , Chapter 28-31, Yonge's translation.
Philo of Alexandria on Freedom
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“But you say, “by obedience to another he loses his liberty.” How then is it that children suffer the orders of their father and mother, and pupils the injunctions of their instructors?”
Every Good Man is Free | 36. -
“We have a very clear evidence of freedom in the equality recognized by all the good in addressing each other.”
Every Good Man is Free | 48. -
“Noble souls, whose brightness the greed of fortune cannot dim, have a kingly something, which urges them to contend on equal footing with persons of the most massive dignity and pits freedom of speech against arrogance.”
Every Good Man is Free | 126. -
“He who has God alone for his leader, he alone is free.”
Every Good Man is Free | 20. -
“The good man … has learnt to set at naught the injunctions laid upon him by those most lawless rulers of the soul, inspired as he is by his ardent yearning for the freedom whose peculiar heritage it is that it obeys no orders and works no will but its own.”
Every Good Man is Free | 22.
Philo of Alexandria on God
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Attributed to Philo of Alexandria:
“He who runs from God in the morning will have him for his companion before night.”
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Attributed to Philo of Alexandria:
“Take pains to know that nothing arose by chance, and that everything in the world came into existence through the providence of God.”
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“Moses … denied to the members of the sacred commonwealth unrestricted liberty to use and partake of the other kinds of food. All the animals of land, sea or air whose flesh is the finest and fattest, thus titillating and exciting the malignant foe pleasure, he sternly forbade them to eat, knowing that they set a trap for the most slavish of the senses, the taste, and produce gluttony, an evil very dangerous both to soul and body.”
69. -
“The holy Moses … discarded passion in general and detesting it, as most vile in itself and in its effects, denounced especially desire as a battery of destruction to the soul, which must be done away with or brought into obedience to the governance of reason, and then all things will be permeated through and through with peace and good order, those perfect forms of the good which bring the full perfection of happy living.”
75-77.
Philo of Alexandria on Happiness
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“The road that leads to pleasure is downhill and very easy, with the result that one does not walk but is dragged along; the other which leads to self-control is uphill, toilsome no doubt but profitable exceedingly. The one carries us away, forced lower and lower as it drives us down its steep incline, till it flings us off on to the level ground at its foot; the other leads heavenwards the immortal who have not fainted on the way and have had the strength to endure the roughness of the hard ascent.”
77.
Philo of Alexandria on Justice
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“There is no sweeter delight than that the soul should be charged through and through with justice, exercising itself in her eternal principles and doctrines and leaving no vacant place into which injustice can make its way.”
On the Special Laws | 97.
Philo of Alexandria on Knowledge
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Attributed to Philo of Alexandria:
“Learning is by nature curiosity.”
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“Embassy to Gaius , Chapter 28-31, Yonge's translation.”
Are you making war upon us, because you anticipate that we will not endure such indignity, but that we will fight on behalf of our laws, and die in defence of our national customs? For you cannot possibly have been ignorant of what was likely to result from your attempt to introduce these innovations respecting our temple. -
“Special Laws , 1st century.”
A Judge must bear in mind that when he tries a case he is himself on trial. -
“Moses … takes one form of desire, that one whose field of activity is the belly, and admonishes and disciplines it as the first step, holding that the other forms will cease to run riot as before and will be restrained by having learnt that their senior and as it were the leader of their company is obedient to the laws of temperance.”
77. -
“Nothing will a man rue more than refusal to listen to the wise.”
Every Good Man is Free | 54. -
“Wisdom … never closes her school of thought but always opens her doors to those who thirst for the sweet water of discourse, and pouring on them an unstinted stream of undiluted doctrine, persuades them to be drunken with the drunkenness which is soberness itself.”
Every Good Man is Free | 13.
Philo of Alexandria on Life
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“As parents in private life teach wisdom to their children, so do [poets] in public life to their cities.”
Every Good Man is Free | 143.
Philo of Alexandria on Love
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“The legislator of the Jews in a bolder spirit went to a further extreme and in the practice of his “naked” philosophy, as they call it, ventured to speak of him who was possessed by love of the divine.”
Every Good Man is Free | 43. -
“A far greater glory is it to the wise to die for freedom, the love of which stands in very truth implanted in the soul like nothing else, not as a casual adjunct but an essential part of its unity, and cannot be amputated without the whole system being destroyed as a result.”
Every Good Man is Free | 75.
Philo of Alexandria on Mind
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“The mind is the eye of the soul.”
55. -
Attributed to Philo of Alexandria:
“What is essential is invisible to the eye; only the mind discerns it.”
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“A Judge must bear in mind that when he tries a case he is himself on trial.”
Special Laws , 1st century. -
“The majority, who through the blindness of their reason do not discern the damages which the soul has sustained, only feel the pain of external injuries, because the faculty of judgment, which alone can enable them to apprehend the damage to the mind, is taken from them.”
Every Good Man is Free | 55.
Philo of Alexandria on Nature
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“It would be a sign of great simplicity to think that the world was created in six days, or indeed at all in time; [...] Time is a thing posterior to the world. Therefore it would be correctly said that the world was not created in time, but that time had its existence in consequence of the world. For it is the motion of the heaven that has displayed the nature of time.”
Allegories of the Sacred Laws ( Legum allegoriae ), Book I, §2; tr. C. D. Yonge, The works of Philo Judaeus (1854), Vol. 1, pp. 52–53. -
“But some, making no account of the wealth of nature, pursue the wealth of vain opinions. They choose to lean on one who lacks rather than one who has the gift of sight, and with this defective guidance to their steps must of necessity fall.”
On the Virtues | 167.
Philo of Alexandria on Virtue
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“If one adds anything small or great to the queen of virtues, piety, or on the other hand takes something from it, in either case he will change and transform its nature. Addition will beget superstition and subtraction will beget impiety.”
On the Special Laws | 99- 101. -
“Bodies have men as their masters, souls their vices and passions.”
Every Good Man is Free | 17.
Things actually not said by Philo of Alexandria
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Philo of Alexandria but are in fact from someone else. Did Philo of Alexandria say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
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Did Philo of Alexandria say this? No.
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”
Attributed to Philo in How Do We Know When It's God?: A Spiritual Memoir (1999) by Dan Wakefield. It has also been wrongly attributed to Plato and Ephrem the Syrian . It is a variant of the Christmas message "Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle," written by the Scottish preacher Ian Maclaren (also known as John Watson) in 1897. Be Kind; Everyone You Meet is Fighting a Hard Battle. Plato? Philo of Alexandria? .