Philolaus Quotes
Philolaus of Croton was a Greek Pythagorean philosopher and the first member of the Pythagorean school whose writings survived into the classical period. His fragments, preserved by later authors, articulate a cosmology in which the world is built up from limiters and unlimiteds joined by harmony, and a celebrated astronomical model in which a central fire, rather than the earth, stands at the center of the universe. The quotes below are attributed to Philolaus, organized by topic.
Browse Philolaus by topic
Philolaus on God
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“The ancient theologists and priests... testify that the soul is united with the body as if for the sake of punishment; and so is buried in body as in a sepulchre.”
Quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus , Stromata , Book III (ca. 190 AD) Tr. Thomas Taylor , The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries: A Dissertation (1891)
Philolaus on Knowledge
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Attributed to Philolaus:
“All things which can be known have number; for it is not possible that without number anything can be either conceived or known.”
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Attributed to Philolaus:
“Without number, nothing could be distinguished or thought.”
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“Fragment 2. All things, at least those we know, contain number ; for it is evident that nothing whatever can either be thought or known, without number. Number has two distinct kinds: the odd, and the even, and a third, derived from a mingling of the other two kinds, the even-odd. Each of its subspecies is susceptible of many very numerous varieties; which each manifests individually.”
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“Fragment 3. The harmony is generally the result of contraries; for it is the unity of multiplicity, and the agreement of discordances . (Nicom.Arith.2:509).”
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Philolaus on Nature
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Attributed to Philolaus:
“Number is the bond of the eternal continuance of things.”
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Attributed to Philolaus:
“Order itself is harmony.”
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Attributed to Philolaus:
“The world is one composed of limiters and unlimiteds.”
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“There is a fire in the middle at the centre, which is the Vesta of the universe, the house of Jupiter , the mother of the Gods, and the basis coherence and measure of nature.”
Quoted by Johannes Stobaeus , Eclogues (5th-century CE) Phys. p. 51, Tr. Thomas Taylor , The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus (1824) p.156. -
“Fragment 1. (Stob.21.7; Diog.#.8.85) The world's nature is a harmonious compound of infinite and finite elements ; similar is the totality of the world in itself, and of all it contains. b. All beings are necessarily finite or infinite, or simultaneously finite and infinite; but they could not all be infinite only.”
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Philolaus on Time
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“[Number is] the commanding and self-begotten container of the eternal duration of mundane concerns.”
Quoted by Aristotle , Metaphysics (ca. 350 BC) Tr. Thomas Taylor , The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus on the First Book of Euclid's Elements (1792) Vol. 1 , p. xix.