Skip to content

[A]ll things which can be known have number; for it is not possible that without number anything can either be conceived or known.

Another quote →

Topics

Mathematics

More quotes by Philolaus

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.

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.

All Philolaus quotes →

You may also like

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973)

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite.

William Blake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)

Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such another proposition is true of that thing.

Bertrand Russell

The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.

Núria Añó

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Philolaus (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.