" Ancient people, like the Greeks, had a deep fascination with numbers. Could it be that in difficult times numbers were the only constant thing in an ever shifting world? To the Pythagoreans, an ancient Greek sect, numbers were tangible, immutable, comfortable, eternal, more reliable than friends, less threatening than Apollo and Zeus. "

― Clifford A. Pickover , The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics