Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is no use saying the nation is large. . . . How large? It is no use saying the radium is scarce. . . . How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
Alfred Whitehead
(1861 - 1947)
Source: J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
