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Philolaus Quotes
470 BC–385 BC Greece
Philolaus (c. 470 – c. 385 BCE) was a Greek Pythagorean and Presocratic philosopher. He argued that at the foundation of everything is the part played by the limiting and limitless, which combine together in a harmony.
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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.
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.
[Number is] the commanding and self-begotten container of the eternal duration of mundane concerns.
[A]ll things which can be known have number; for it is not possible that without number anything can either be conceived or known.
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).
The Life of Pythagoras (1919)
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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