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Philo Quotes
Philo (20 BCE – 50 CE), known also as Philo of Alexandria and as Philo Judeaus, was a Hellenized Jewish philosopher born in Alexandria, Egypt. The few biographical details concerning him are found in his own works, especially in Legatio ad Gaium, ("embassy to Gaius") and in Flavius Josephus (Antiquities xviii.8, § 1; comp. ib. xix.5, § 1; xx.5, § 2).
Also known as: Philo Judaeus, Philo Judeaus, Philo of Alexandria
Random Philo quote
32 quotes
A Judge must bear in mind that when he tries a case he is himself on trial.
He who has God alone for his leader, he alone is free.
He who tries to flee from God takes refuge in himself.
As parents in private life teach wisdom to their children, so do [poets] in public life to their cities.
We have a very clear evidence of freedom in the equality recognized by all the good in addressing each other.
Nothing will a man rue more than refusal to listen to the wise.
Bodies have men as their masters, souls their vices and passions.
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.
You have given yourself up to each of [the senses] to be made use of… and you have become… the property of [the senses]… having lost your own power over yourself.
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?
They in their desire for health commit themselves to physicians, but these people show no willingness to cast off the soul-sickness of their untrained grossness by resorting to wise men....
Even the great king will appear as the poorest of men if compared with a single virtue. For his wealth is soulless, buried deep in store-houses and recesses of the earth, but the wealth of virtue lies in the sovereign part of the soul, and the purest part of existence.
God and no mortal is my Sovereign.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Can we then hold the poverty-in-wealth of the money-grubbing usurers to be of any account? They may seem to be kings with purses full of gold, but they never even in their dreams have had a glimpse of the wealth that has eyes to see.
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.
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.
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