“...the people of Britain were for a long time embroiled in civil war; and the island came into the hands of five kings who kept attacking and massacring each other’s men in turn. Some time later a certain young man named Dunvallo Molmutius came into prominence because of his personal courage.... Almost as soon as he had succeeded to the kingship of Cornwall after his father’s death, he attacked Pinner, King of Loegria, and killed him in pitched battle.... When he had completely subjugated the entire island, he fashioned for himself a crown of gold and restored the realm to its earlier status.”
- Geoffrey of Monmouth.

“Diodorus, Ammianus and Valerius Maximus associate the belief in immortality with the Pythagorean theory of metempsychosis, equating the Celtic doctrine with the ‘belief of Pythagoras’ or idealizing this by making Druids ‘members of the intimate fellowship of the Pythagorean faith’.
- Stuart Piggott.

“The discovery of Pythagoras, that the basic intervals of Greek music could be represented by the ratios 1:2, 3:2, and 4:3, made it appear that kosmos - order and beauty - was imposed on the chaotic range of sound by means of the first four integers 1, 2, 3 and 4. These add up to 10, which provided striking confirmation, if it was not the actual ground, of the Pythagorean belief that the number ten ‘was something perfect, and contained in itself the whole nature of number’. This number they represented graphically by the figure known as the tetractys, which became a sacred symbol for them.”
- W.K.C. Guthrie.

“The mathematical Leibniz saw in the mystical elegance of the binary system of zero and one the image of Creation. The unity of the Supreme Being operating in the void by binary function would, he felt, suffice to make all beings from the void.”
- Marshall McLuhan.

“ ‘If you believe that 2+2=4, then you believe; so why not believe in God?’ Evidently Cardinal Poelaetuo far outstrips Descartes who affirmed that no geometer is an atheist. This perfectly demonstrates the candour of so-called modern mathematicians, be they bourbakists or otherwise, who think they are exorcising (sorry, axiomatising) their faith by declaring it to be based on a system of arbitrarily chosen relationships whose value is simple coherence: having taken that precaution, they build up their minutious and labyrinthine cathedral in homage to the Coherent God, with more blind faith than Tertullian, with his lucid ‘quia absurdum’.”
- College of ‘Pataphysics (Dossier 18/19).

“Wretched, thrice wretched, keep your hands from beans.”
- Old Pythagorean axiom.