Philo of Alexandria Quotes on Knowledge
Philo's allegorical commentaries on the Pentateuch give Hellenistic Jewish thought its most sophisticated hermeneutical method — the interpretation of the literal narrative as the outer surface of an inner philosophical and spiritual content articulable through the categories of Middle Platonist, Stoic, and Pythagorean philosophy. The framework treats the scriptural text as itself the principal source of philosophical knowledge, with the consequent expository method that reads the patriarchs as personifications of philosophical virtues and the Mosaic legislation as the systematic articulation of the metaphysical and ethical truths the Greek schools had partially recovered through philosophical inquiry alone.
Quotes
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“The mind is the eye of the soul.”
55. -
Attributed to Philo of Alexandria:
“Learning is by nature curiosity.”
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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. -
“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. -
“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. -
“Nothing will a man rue more than refusal to listen to the wise.”
Every Good Man is Free | 54. -
“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. -
“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.