Quotes about quantity
page 3

“What Mathematicians Chiefly consider in Motion is the Mode of Lation or Manner of bearing, and the Quantity of the motive Force. …But because the Quantity of motive Force cannot be known without Time, we must say something concerning its Nature.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Geometrical Lectures (1735)

Motivation, Nature, Time

“By science I mean an assemblage of transcendental propositions discoverable by human reason, and reducible to first principles, axioms, or maxims, from which they may all be derived in a regular succession; and there are consequently as many sciences as there are general objects of our intellectual powers: when man first exerts those powers, his objects are himself and the rest of nature; himself he perceives to be composed of body and mind… and in the leisure… his intellect is directed to nature at large, to the substance of natural bodies, to their several properties, and to their quantity… and… arrives at the demonstration of a first intelligent cause; whence his collected wisdom, being arranged in the form of science, chiefly consists of physiology and medicine, metaphysicks and logick, ethicks and jurisprudence, natural philosophy and mathematicks; from which the religion of nature (since revealed religion must be referred to history, as alone affording evidence of it) has in all ages and in all nations been the sublime and consoling result.”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

p, 125
"On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (1794)

Wisdom, Age, Religion, History

“Some fundamental unity was surely to be discerned either in the matter or the structure of things. The Ionic philosophers chose the former field: Pythagoras took the latter. …The geometry which he had learnt in Egypt was merely practical. …It was natural to nascent philosophy to draw, by false analogies, and the use of a brief and deceptive vocabulary, enormous conclusions from a very few observed facts: and it is not surprising if Pythagoras, having learnt in Egypt that number was essential to the exact description of forms and of the relations of forms, concluded that number was the cause of form and so of every other quality. Number, he inferred, is quantity and quantity is form and form is quality.
Footnote2 Primitive men, on seeing a new thing, look out especially for some resemblance in it to a known thing, so that they may call both by the same name. This developes a habit of pressing small and partial analogies. It also causes many meanings to be at attached to the same word. Hasty and confused theories are the inevitable result.”

James Gow (scholar) (1854–1923) scholar

A Short History of Greek Mathematics (1884)

Men, Nature, Drawing, Falseness

“Let us imagine that from any given point the system of shortest lines going out from it is constructed; the position of an arbitrary point may then be determined by the initial direction of the geodesic in which it lies, and by its distance measured along that line from the origin. It can therefore be expressed in terms of the ratios dx0 of the quantities dx in this geodesic, and of the length s of this line. …the square of the line-element is \sum (dx)^2 for infinitesimal values of the x, but the term of next order in it is equal to a homogeneous function of the second order… an infinitesimal, therefore, of the fourth order; so that we obtain a finite quantity on dividing this by the square of the infinitesimal triangle, whose vertices are (0,0,0,…), (x1, x2, x3,…), (dx1, dx2, dx3,…). This quantity retains the same value so long as… the two geodesics from 0 to x and from 0 to dx remain in the same surface-element; it depends therefore only on place and direction. It is obviously zero when the manifold represented is flat, i. e., when the squared line-element is reducible to \sum (dx)^2, and may therefore be regarded as the measure of the deviation of the manifoldness from flatness at the given point in the given surface-direction. Multiplied by -¾ it becomes equal to the quantity which Privy Councillor Gauss has called the total curvature of a surface. …The measure-relations of a manifoldness in which the line-element is the square root of a quadric differential may be expressed in a manner wholly independent of the choice of independent variables. A method entirely similar may for this purpose be applied also to the manifoldness in which the line-element has a less simple expression, e. g., the fourth root of a quartic differential. In this case the line-element, generally speaking, is no longer reducible to the form of the square root of a sum of squares, and therefore the deviation from flatness in the squared line-element is an infinitesimal of the second order, while in those manifoldnesses it was of the fourth order. This property of the last-named continua may thus be called flatness of the smallest parts. The most important property of these continua for our present purpose, for whose sake alone they are here investigated, is that the relations of the twofold ones may be geometrically represented by surfaces, and of the morefold ones may be reduced to those of the surfaces included in them…”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

On the Hypotheses which lie at the Bases of Geometry (1873)

Imagination, Parting, Dependency

“No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a part of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone; and it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous to the society than that into which it would have gone of its own accord. Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in his view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II, p. 486.

Nature, Study, Parting

“When… we have a series of values of a quantity which continually diminish, and in such a way, that name any quantity we may, however small, all the values, after a certain value, are severally less than that quantity, then the symbol by which the values are denoted is said to diminish without limit. And if the series of values increase in succession, so that name any quantity we may, however great, all after a certain point will be greater, then the series is said to increase without limit. It is also frequently said, when a quantity diminishes without limit, that it has nothing, zero or 0, for its limit: and that when it increases without limit it has infinity or ∞ or 1⁄0 for its limit.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Introductory Chapter, pp.9-10
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

Way, Success

“We’re still growing — slowly — but we’ve got a better handle on it now. We could take on even more projects, but we want to remain very selective. Switzerland is still a country that has good conditions for architects compared to most other countries we’re involved with — both in quality and quantity. Here, architects are even closer to the client and realization.”

Jacques Herzog (1950) Swiss architect

places.designobserver.com http://places.designobserver.com/feature/an-interview-with-jacques-herzog/32118/.

Country

“The demand for money is regulated entirely by its value, and its value by its quantity.”

David Ricardo (1772–1823) British political economist, broker and politician

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter XIII, Taxes on Gold, p. 123

Money

“The second part of the book… contains an exposition of the first principles of the theory of complex quantities; hitherto, the very elements of this theory have not been easily accessible to the English student, except recently in Prof. Chrystal's excellent treatise on Algebra. The subject of Analytical Trigonometry has been too frequently presented to the student in the state in which it was left by Euler, before the researches of Cauchy, Abel, Gauss, and others, had placed the use of imaginary quantities, and especially the theory of infinite series and products, where real or complex quantities are involved, on a firm scientific basis. In the Chapter on the exponential theorem and logarithms, I have ventured to introduce the term "generalized logarithm" for the doubly infinite series of values of the logarithm of a quantity.”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

A Treatise on Plane Trigonometry https://books.google.com/books?id=_ktLAAAAMAAJ (1891) Preface

Books, Parting

“There are various reasons why an individual might habitually consume large quantities of alcohol, but they all effectively boil down to the same thing. Five years ago, my business partner was a happy drunk. Three years later, he had become a moody drunk. And by the last summer, he was fumbling at the knob of the door to alcoholism. As with most habitual drinkers, he was nice-enough, regular-if-not-exactly-sharp kind of guy. He thought so too. That's why he drank. Because it seemed that with alcohol in his syste, he could more fully embody this idea of being that kind of guy.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 7: Before the Strange Man

Happiness, Alcohol, Guy, Idea

“The big banks are the "state apparatus" which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism' our task here is merely to lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus, to make it even bigger, even more democratic, even more comprehensive. Quantity will be transformed into quality. A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?", (1917), The Lenin Anthology
1910s

“As the title of his 1941 book indicates, the theory of capital lay at the heart of his theory of the cycle. The reason is that he attributes the cycle not to changes in aggregate demand, or even to changes in the quantity of capital, but to changes in the structure of production and hence the structure of the capital stock. In this, his theory was highly unusual: one of the reasons for his failure to engage more effectively with Keynes was the latter’s inability to see how the theory of capital could be of any importance for the cycle. Because the theory of capital is so central, and because it is so complex, it needs to be explained carefully. After that, the rest of his theory falls into place comparatively easily.”

Roger Backhouse (economist) (1951) British economist

"Hayek on money and the business cycle", 2006

Books, Failure, Change, Heart

“What makes a piece of mathematical economics not only mathematics but also economics is, I believe, this: When we set up a system of theoretical relationships and use economic names for the otherwise purely theoretical variables involved, we have in mind some actual experiment, or some design of an experiment, which we could at least imagine arranging, in order to measure those quantities in real economic life that we think might obey the laws imposed on their theoretical namesakes.”

Trygve Haavelmo (1911–1999) Norwegian economist and econometrician

Trygve Haavelmo, "The probability approach in econometrics" in: Supplement to Econometrica. 12 91944), p. 5; Cited in Pearl (2012, 1-2)

Life, Law, Imagination, Mathematics

“Care for the race, even if the individual must suffer — this must be the keynote of our future. This was the guiding principle which underlay all the discussions of the Second International Congress of Eugenics in 1921. Not quantity but quality must be the aim in the development of each nation, to make men fit to maintain their places in the struggle for existence. We must be concerned above all with racial values; every race must seek out and develop and improve its own racial characteristics. Racial consciousness is not pride of race, but proper respect for the Purity of race is today found in but one nation — the Scandinavian.”

Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–1935) American geologist, paleontologist, and eugenist

As quoted in "The World's Work: A History of Our Time" (1924) by Walter Hines Page and Arthur Wilson Page, p. 253; also in "Man Rises to Parnassus" (1928), p. 220

Men, Suffering, Future

“But before I proceed farther it may be proper to take notice, that since the time when I gave their lordships an account of the near agreement of Mr. Professor Mayer's lunar tables with the observations that had been then made at the Royal Observatory, I have compared several others, which concurred to prove that the difference between the observed and computed places nowhere amounted to more than about one minute and a half; and I find that the difference (small as it is) may yet be diminished by making alterations in some of the equations, whose true quantity could not be determined without proper observations; after making the needful corrections it appeared, by the comparison of above eleven hundred observations taken here since the new instruments were fixed up, that the difference did nowhere amount to more than a minute: it may therefore be reasonably concluded, that so far as it will depend upon the lunar tables the true longitude of a ship at sea may in all cases be found within about half a degree, and generally much nearer.”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence (1832), To Mr. Cleveland Secretary of the Admiralty (April 14, 1760)

Appearance, Time, Dependency, Sea

“Education is the principal tool of socio-economic development and unless all societies are provided with right type of education, adequate in quality and quantity, it will not be possible to tackle satisfactorily the problem of ignorance of health and poverty which afflicts the majority of human beings in the world.”

V. V. Giri (1894–1980) Indian politician and 4th president of India

Gopal Bhargava in: Child Labour http://books.google.co.in/books?id=6iYmX2k6G-MC&pg=PA96, Gyan Publishing House, 1 January 2003, P.96

Health, World, Education, Problem

“Third, consider the insistency of an idea. The insistency of a past idea with reference to the present is a quantity which is less, the further back that past idea is, and rises to infinity as the past idea is brought up into coincidence with the present.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)

Idea, Past

“Summarizing the evidence relating to the slaughter of the Buddhist Monks perpetrated by the Musalman General in the course of his invasion of Bihar in 1197 AD, Mr. Vincent Smith says, "…. Great quantities of plunder were obtained, and the slaughter of the 'shaven headed Brahmans', that is to say the Buddhist monks, was so thoroughly completed, that when the victor sought for someone capable of explaining the contents of the books in the libraries of the monasteries, not a living man could be found who was able to read them. 'It was discovered,' we are told, 'that the whole of that fortress and city was a college, and in the Hindi tongue they call a college Bihar.' " Such was the slaughter of the Buddhist priesthood perpetrated by the Islamic invaders. The axe was struck at the very root. For by killing the Buddhist priesthood, Islam killed Buddhism. This was the greatest disaster that befell the religion of the Buddha in India.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

"The Decline and Fall of Buddhism", in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. III (1987), Government of Maharashtra, p. 229-388

Books, Religion, Reading

“If treasury bills are emitted on a tax appropriated for their redemption in fifteen years, and (to insure preference in the first moments of competition) bearing an interest of six per cent, there is no one who would not take them in preference to the bank paper now afloat, on a principle of patriotism as well as interest; and they would be withdrawn from circulation into private hoards to a considerable amount. Their credit once established, others might be emitted, bottomed also on a tax, but not bearing interest; and if ever their credit faltered, open public loans, on which these bills alone should be received as specie. These, operating as a sinking fund, would reduce the quantity in circulation, so as to maintain that in an equilibrium with specie. It is not easy to estimate the obstacles which, in the beginning, we should encounter in ousting the banks from their possession of the circulation; but a steady and judicious alternation of emissions and loans would reduce them in time.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

ME http://www.yamaguchy.netfirms.com/7897401/jefferson/eppes.html 13:275 1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

Time

“A decrease in the quantity of legislation generally means an increase in the quality of life.”

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

Column, December 23, 2007, "The Gift Of Doing Very Little" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/21/AR2007122101922.html at washingtonpost.com. 2000s

Life

“Needless to say, the history of the United States has been marred from its inception by an enormous quantity of unjust laws, far too many expressly bolstering the oppression of Black people. Particularized reflections of existing social inequities, these laws have repeatedly borne witness to the exploitative and racist core of the society itself. For Blacks, Chicanos, for all nationally oppressed people, the problem of opposing unjust laws and the social conditions which nourish their growth, has always had immediate practical implications. Our very survival has frequently been a direct function of our skill in forging effective channels of resistance. In resisting, we have sometimes been compelled to openly violate those laws which directly or indirectly buttress our oppression. But even when containing our resistance within the orbit of legality, we have been labeled criminals and have been methodically persecuted by a racist legal apparatus.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

If They Come in The Morning (1971)

People, Law, History, Problem

“We have to bring in quality, to give us the quantity we need.”

Billy Davies (1964) Scottish association football player and manager

http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/forest/Forest-look-loan-market-void-left-Earnshaw-injury-says-Davies/article-2638035-detail/article.html
BD looks to the loan market after Earnshaw's injury and a winless start to the season.

“[I]f we could have devised an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of human felicity already attained, and ceased to strive for further improvements.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/lkbak10.txt (1888), Ch. 11.

Music, Home, Mood, Perfection

“Arms cannot be commodities in our world. They must be delivered to the peoples asking for them to use against the common enemy, with no charge and in the quantities needed and available.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Afro-Asian Conference (1965)

People, World

“Silver is sometimes more valuable than gold, that is, in large quantities.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Innocence of Father Brown

The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The Queer Feet
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

“The potential infinite means nothing other than an undetermined, variable quantity, always remaining finite, which has to assume values that either become smaller than any finite limit no matter how small, or greater than any finite limit no matter how great.”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

"Mitteilungen" (1887-8)

“Every measurable thing except numbers is imagined in the manner of a continuous quantity. Therefore, for the mensuration of such a thing, it is necessary that points, lines, and surfaces, or their properties, be imagined. For in them… measure or ratio is initially found… Therefore, every intensity which can be acquired successively ought to be imagined by a straight line perpendicularly erected on some point of the space or subject of the intensible thing, e. g., a quality… And since the quantity or ratio of lines is better known and is more readily conceived by us—nay the line is in the first species of continua, therefore such intensity ought to be imagined by lines… Therefore, equal intensities are designated by equal lines, a double intensity by a double line, and always in the same way if one proceeds proportionally.”

Nicole Oresme (1323–1382) French philosopher

Tractatus de Configurationibus et Qualitatibus et Motuum (c. 1350)

Way, Imagination, Success

“In the morning we saw that the sea was rough, and people said there would be trouble.... Fifty men volunteered to go at once, and followed the old sailor without a word. We descended the cliffs to the beach, and there we saw a terrible sight : several vessels rushing, one after the other, at fearful speed, upon our rocks. Our men put three boats out to sea, but before they had rowed ten strokes one boat sank, another was upset by a huge breaker, while a third was thrown upon the beach.... The sea threw up hundreds of corpses, as well as quantities of cargo... Then came a fourth, fifth and sixth vessel, all of which were lost with their crew and cargo alike, upon the rocks. The tempest was furious... The next morning.... As I was passing by a hollow in the cliff, I saw a large sail spread, as I thought, over a bale of merchandise. I lifted the sail and saw a heap of corpses. I was so frightened that I ran home, and found my mother and grandmother on their knees, praying for the shipwrecked sailors.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote c. 1870; cited by Julia Cartwright in Jean Francois Millet, his Life and Letters, Swan Sonnenschein en Co, Lim. London / The Macmillian Company, New York; second edition, September 1902, p. 22
taken from Millet's youth-memories, about the years he lived as an boy close to the wild coast of Normandy, written down on request of his friend and later biographer Alfred Sensier
1870 - 1875

Men, People, Fear, Home

“To take what might seem an "objective", macro-economic approach to the origins of the world economy would be to treat the behavior of early European explorers, merchants, and conquerors as if they were simply rational responses to opportunities—as if this were just what anyone would have done in the same situation. This is what the use of equations so often does: make it seem perfectly natural to assume that, if the price of silver in China is twice what it is in Seville, and inhabitants of Seville are capable of getting their hands on large quantities of silver and transporting it to China, then clearly they will, even if doing so requires the destruction of entire civilizations. Or if there is a demand for sugar in England, and enslaving millions is the easiest way to acquire labor to produce it, then it is inevitable that some will enslave them.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Eleven, "Age of the Great Capitalist Empires", p. 314

World, Way, Behavior, Nature

“The discontinuation of bodily exercises afforded a proportionable quantity of leisure time for the cultivation of the mind; so that the manners of mankind were softened by degrees, and learning, which had been so long neglected, became fashionable, and was esteemed an indispensable mark of a polite education.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. xxxii
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Education

Education, Exercises, Fashion, Learning

“After I had made a second blast and tryal the fesibility of making iron with pitcole and sea-cole I found by my new invention, the quality to be good and profitable, but the quantity did not exceed above 3 tuns per week.”

Dud Dudley (1600–1684) British metallurgist

Source: Metallum Martis, 1665, p. 5

Sea

“Therefore, broadly speaking, males invest less and seek quantity of mates, while females invest more and seek quality of mates.”

Matt Ridley (1958) economist

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 3

“It must be remembered that our State is but in its infancy. That its population is small, and its material wealth is very limited. That notwithstanding it embraces within its boundaries a large area of territory, which includes extensive districts of productive lands, valuable mines of coal, iron, and precious metals, vast quantities of timber, broad rivers, innumerable bays, harbors, and inlets, abounding in fish of the choicest kind sufficient to supply the markets of the world, yet its resources are comparatively undeveloped. And that while it possesses all the elements of grandeur and magnificence, its greatness can not be successfully achieved without the benefit of a well regulated government, whose foundation is laid upon the broad principles of honesty, economy, and justice.”

W. W. Thayer (1827–1899) American judge

W. W. Thayer (1880). Governor William W. Thayer - Biennial Message, 1880 http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/Recordpdf/6777837. Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State. Source: Messages and Documents, Biennial Message of Gov. William Thayer to the Legislative Assembly, 1880, Salem, Oregon, W.P. Keady, State Printer, 1880.

World, Justice, Fish, Wealth

“Lord Goschen tells you that France only takes 2 per cent. of its corn from abroad, that it is self-sufficient, and that Germany only takes 30 per cent., whereas, he says, we take four-fifths. That is not a comforting reflection…it is not a comforting reflection to think that we, a part of the British Empire that might be self-sufficient and self-contained, are, nevertheless, dependent, according to Lord Goschen, for four-fifths of our supplies upon foreign countries, any one of which, by shutting their doors upon us, might reduce us to a state of almost absolute starvation. … the working man has to fear the result of a shortage of supplies and of a consequent monopoly. If in time of war one of the great countries, Russia, Germany, France, or the United States of America, were to cut off its supply, it would infallibly raise the price according to the quantity which we received from that country. If there were no war, if in times of peace these countries wanted their corn for themselves, which they will do, or if there were bad harvests, which there may be in either of these cases, you will find the price of corn rising many times higher than any tax I have ever suggested. And there is only one remedy for it. There is only one remedy for a short supply. It is to increase your sources of supply. You must call in the new world, the Colonies, to redress the balance of the old. Call in the Colonies, and they will answer to your call with very little stimulus or encouragement. They will give you a supply which will be never failing and all sufficient.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech in Newcastle (20 October 1903), quoted in The Times (21 October 1903), p. 10.
1900s

War, World, Fear, Peace

“Do not let us imagine that discoveries in the world of the higher mathematics, of physics or biology are going to remove or even reduce our difficulties on the moral plane…The realm of morals is a world neither of quantity nor of chemical action. It is a world of values. It is precisely these values of right and wrong, of good and evil, of honesty and courage, which matter supremely for religion and national life…I am not despising science. I am only suggesting that moral values, eternal in their quality, transient in their form and application, are the foundation of a country's greatness. If moral values flourish in our common life all will be well with the nation.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the annual assembly of the Congregational Union, London (12 May 1931), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 86-87.
1931

Life, World, Religion, Imagination

“I must now explain what I mean by the quantity of action. A certain action is necessary for the carrying of a body from one point to another: this action depends on the velocity which the body has and the space which it describes; but it is neither the velocity nor the space taken separately. The quantity of action varies directly as the velocity and the length of path described; it is proportional to the sum of the spaces, each being multiplied by the velocity with which the body describes it. It is this quantity of action which is here the true expense (dépense) of nature, and which she economizes as much as possible in the motion of light.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Histoire de l'Academie (1744) p. 423; Les Oeuvres De Mr. De Maupertuis (1752) vol. iv p. 17; as quoted by Philip Edward Bertrand Jourdain, The Principle of Least Action https://books.google.com/books?id=y3UVAQAAIAAJ (1913) p. 5.

Nature, Light, Dependency

“In the abstract world of American economists, equations run both ways; they believe that by changing the sign of a variable from plus to minus or from minus to plus or the price and quantity of x or y, the direction of historical movement can be reversed.”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter Eight, International Finance, p. 336

World, Way, Change

“The inner connection between a positivism of numbers and quantities and one of human values and qualities is the excision of a critical distance and theory. Both surrender to different faces of reality—its facts or its ideology—and both stay clear and clean of antagonisms and contradictions.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 61

Reality

“In arithmetical algebra we consider symbols as representing numbers, and the operations to which they are submitted as included in the same definitions as in common arithmetic; the signs + and - denote the operations of addition and subtraction in their ordinary meaning only, and those operations are considered as impossible in all cases where the symbols subjected to them possess values which would render them so in case they were replaced by digital numbers; thus in expressions such as a + b we must suppose a and b to be quantities of the same kind; in others, like a - b, we must suppose a greater than b and therefore homogeneous with it; in products and quotients, like ab and \frac{a}{b} we must suppose the multiplier and divisor to be abstract numbers; all results whatsoever, including negative quantities, which are not strictly deducible as legitimate conclusions from the definitions of the several operations must be rejected as impossible, or as foreign to the science.”

George Peacock (1791–1858) Scottish mathematician

Vol. I: Arithmetical Algebra Preface, p. iv
A Treatise on Algebra (1842)

Science

“The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization….
The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.
The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.
It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.
But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

Remarks at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (May 22, 1964). Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963–64, book 1, p. 704.
1960s

Life, Wisdom, Men, Hunger

“As for negative numbers… most mathematicians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not accept them… In the fifteenth century Nicolas Chuquet and, in the sixteenth, Stifel both spoke of negative numbers as absurd numbers. …Descartes accepted them, in part. …he had shown that, given an equation, one can obtain another whose roots are larger than the original one by any given quantity. Thus an equation with negative roots could be transformed into one with positive roots. Since we can turn false roots into real roots, Descartes was willing to accept negative numbers. Pascal regarded the subtraction of 4 from zero as utter nonsense.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 252.

Parting, Falseness

“If you import a commercial quantity of illegal drugs, it is because you have made the personal decision that you are prepared to get rich by destroying our children. I have made the decision that I love our children enough that we will kill you if you do this.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

1995-08-27
Gingrich Suggests Tough Drug Measure
New York Times
0362-4331
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/27/us/gingrich-suggests-tough-drug-measure.html
2011-12-12
Former Marijuana User Newt Gingrich Proposed the Death Penalty for Trafficking Marijuana in 1996
Paul
Constant
The Stranger
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/12/12/former-marijuana-user-newt-gingrich-proposed-the-death-penalty-for-trafficking-marijuana-in-1996
regarding his "Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996" (H.R. 4170) bill
1990s

Love, Children, Decision, Personality

““Aristocracy,” … taken in its etymological sense, means precisely the power of the elect. The elect, by the very definition of the word, can only be the few, and their power, or rather their authority, being due to their intellectual superiority, has nothing in common with the numerical strength on which democracy is based, a strength whose inherent tendency is to sacrifice the minority to the majority, and therefore quality to quantity and the elect to the masses.”

René Guénon (1886–1951) French metaphysician

Source: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), pp. 97-98

Democracy, Sense

“Spade’s thick fingers made a cigarette with deliberate care, sifting a measured quantity of tan flakes down into curved paper, spreading the flakes so that they lay equal at the ends with a slight depression in the middle, thumbs rolling the paper’s inner edge down and up under the outer edge as forefingers pressed it over, thumbs and fingers sliding to the paper cylinder’s ends to hold it even while tongue licked the flap, left forefinger and thumb pinching their ends while right forefinger and thumb smoothed the damp seam, right forefinger and thumb twisting their end and lifting the other to Spade’s mouth.”

Dashiell Hammett book The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon (1930)

“Stiffy was one of those girls who enjoy in equal quantities the gall of an army mule and the calm insouciance of a fish on a slab of ice.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Code of the Woosters

The Code of the Woosters (1938)

Girl, Fish

“The first machine of Papin was very similar to the gunpowder-engine… of Huyghens. In place of gunpowder, a small quantity of water is placed at the bottom of the cylinder, A; a fire is built beneath it, "the bottom being made of very thin metal," and the steam formed soon raises the piston, B, to the top where a latch, E, engaging a notch in latch engaging the piston rod, H, holds it up until it is desired that it shall drop. The fire being removed, the steam condenses, and a vacuum is formed below the piston, and the latch, E, being disengaged, the piston is driven down by the superincumbent atmosphere and raises the weight which has been, meantime, attached to a rope… passing from the piston rod over pulleys… The machine had a cylinder two and a half inches in diameter, and raised 60 pounds once a minute; and Papin calculated that a machine of a little more than two feet diameter of cylinder and of four feet stroke would raise 8,000 pounds four feet per minute—i. e., that it would yield about one horse-power.”

Robert Henry Thurston (1839–1903) mechanical engineer

Robert Henry Thurston, A History of the Growth of the Steam-engine https://books.google.com/books?id=VDgOAAAAYAAJ (1878) Parts 1-2, pp. 50-51

Water, Horse

“We resolved to end our poison-enquiries by tasting the venomous liquor. According, having diluted a quantity of it, with a very little warm water, several of us ventured to put some of it upon the tip of our tongues. We all agreed, that it tasted very sharp and fiery, as if the tongue had been struck through with something scalding or burning. This sensation went off in two or three hours: and one gentleman, who would not be satisfied without trying a large drop undiluted, found his tongue swelled with a little inflammation and the soreness lasted two days. But neither his nor our boldness was attended with any ill consequence.”

Richard Mead (1673–1754) British physician

Source: A Mechanical Account of Poisons (1702), p. 22

Water

“The establishment of "The Times" newspaper is an example, on a large scale, of a manufactory in which the division of labour, both mental and bodily, is admirably illustrated, and in which also the effect of domestic economy is well exemplified. It is scarcely imagined, by the thousands who read that paper in various quarters of the globe, what a scene of organized activity the factory presents during the whole night, or what a quantity of talent and mechanical skill is put in action for their amusement and information.”

Charles Babbage On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures

Source: On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 1832/1841, p. 270; Ch. 28 "Proper circumstances for the application of machinery."

Imagination, Time, Reading, Night

“A Continent is a great quantity of Land, not separated by any Sea from the rest of the World, as the whole Continent of Europe, Asia, Africa.”

Peter Heylin (1599–1662) English ecclesiastic and author of polemical, historical, political and theological tracts

Cosmographie (1657)

World, Sea

“Definite portions of a manifoldness, distinguished by a mark or by a boundary, are called Quanta. Their comparison with regard to quantity is accomplished in the case of discrete magnitudes by counting, in the case of continuous magnitudes by measuring. Measure consists in the superposition of the magnitudes to be compared; it therefore requires a means of using one magnitude as the standard for another. In the absence of this, two magnitudes can only be compared when one is a part of the other; in which case also we can only determine the more or less and not the how much. The researches which can in this case be instituted about them form a general division of the science of magnitude in which magnitudes are regarded not as existing independently of position and not as expressible in terms of a unit, but as regions in a manifoldness.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

On the Hypotheses which lie at the Bases of Geometry (1873)

Science, Parting

“Economic theory deals with two concepts, Value and Economy. Abstract reasoning regarding these concepts rests ultimately on mathematical concepts of quantity, time and energy. The three are inseparable, for quantity and time are dimensions of energy. The quantity relationships of energy, usually termed "statics," turn on the problem of the relation of the parts to the whole, while the time relationships, usually termed "dynamics," are the relations of a process that connects past, present and future.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 1; Lead paragraph first chapter on Mechanism, Scarcity, Working Rules

Mathematics, Problem, Time, Past

“Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them.”

David Ricardo (1772–1823) British political economist, broker and politician

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter I, Section I, On Value, p. 5

“Laboratory or industrial chemical reactions are carried out with quantities that range from milligrams to tons, so we must be able to relate the relative atomic mass scale to the macroscopic scales used in practice. The link between the two scales is provided by Avogadro’s number”

David W. Oxtoby (1951) President of Pomona college

NA
Principles of Modern Chemistry (7th ed., 2012), Ch. 2 : Chemical Formulas, Equations, and Reaction Yields

“A large quantity of examples is indispensable.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Preface, pp. viii
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

“It sounds rather strange to talk of an infinite universe still expanding. If we were certain that the curvature was negative, we might still, as in the case of positive curvature, replace the phrase "the universe expands" by the equivalent one "the curvature of the universe decreases." But if the curvature is zero, and remains zero throughout, what sort of meaning are we to attach to the "expansion"? The real meaning is, of course, that the mutual distances between the galactic systems, measured in so-called natural measure, increase proportionally to a certain quantity R appearing in the equations, and varying with the time. The interpretation of R as the "radius of curvature" of the universe, though still possible if the universe has a curvature, evidently does not go down to the fundamental meaning of it.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

Nature, Universe, Appearance, Time

“The United States and the post-Stalinist Soviet Union … share the same cultural aims. Both issue from the assumption that wealth is a superior and adequate substitute for symbolic impoverishment. Both American and Soviet cultures are essentially variants of the same belief in wealth as the functional equivalent of a high civilization. In both cultures, the controlling symbolism has been stripped down to belief in the efficacy of wealth. Quantity has become quality. The answer to all questions of “what for?””

Philip Rieff (1922–2006) American sociologist

is “more.”
The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)

Question, Wealth

“The systems approach to problems does not mean that the most generally formulated problem must be solved in one research project. However desirable this may be, it is seldom possible to realize it in practice. In practice, parts of the total problem are usually solved in sequence. In many cases the total problem cannot be formulated in advance but the solution of one phase of it helps define the next phase. For example, a production control project may require determination of the most economic production quantities of different items. Once these are found it may turn out that these quantities cannot be produced on the available equipment in the available time. This, then, gives rise to a new problem whose solution will affect the solution obtained in the first phase.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Introduction to Operations Research (1957), p. 7

Problem, Time, Help, Parting

“Gravitation is not only similar to inertia in its generality, it is also measured by the same number… the mass. The inertial mass is what Newton calls the "quantity of matter": it is a measure for the resistance offered by a body to a force trying to alter its state of motion. It might be called the "passive mass." The gravitational mass, on the other hand, is a measure of the force exerted by the body in attracting other bodies. We might call it the "active" mass. The equality of active and passive, or gravitational and inertial, mass was in Newton's system a most remarkable accidental co-incidence, something like a miracle. Newton himself decidedly felt it as such, and made experiments to verify it, by swinging a pendulum with a hollow bob which could be filled with different materials. The force acting on the pendulum is proportional to its gravitational mass, the inertia to its inertial mass: the period of its swing thus depends on the ratio between these two masses. The fact that the period is always the same therefore proves that the gravitational and inertial masses are equal.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

Dependency

“As a Line, I say, is looked upon to be the Trace of a Point moving forward, being in some sort divisible by a Point, and may be divided by Motion one Way, viz. as to Length; so Time may be conceiv'd as the Trace of a Moment continually flowing, having some Kind of Divisibility from an Instant, and from a successive Flux, inasmuch as it can be divided some how or other. And like as the Quantity of a Line consists of but one Length following the Motion; so the Quantity of Time pursues but one Succession stretched out as it were in Length, which the Length of the Space moved over shews and determines. We therefore shall always express Time by a right Line; first, indeed, taken or laid down at Pleasure, but whose Parts will exactly answer to the proportionable Parts of Time, as its Points do to the respective Instants of Time, and will aptly serve to represent them. Thus much for Time.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

p, 125
Geometrical Lectures (1735)

Pleasure, Way, Time, Success

“It is not true that on an exchange of commodities we give value for value. On the contrary, each of the two contracting parties in every case, gives a less for a greater value. … If we really exchanged equal values, neither party could make a profit. And yet, they both gain, or ought to gain. Why? The value of a thing consists solely in its relation to our wants. What is more to the one is less to the other, and vice versa. … It is not to be assumed that we offer for sale articles required for our own consumption. … We wish to part with a useless thing, in order to get one that we need; we want to give less for more. … It was natural to think that, in an exchange, value was given for value, whenever each of the articles exchanged was of equal value with the same quantity of gold. … But there is another point to be considered in our calculation. The question is, whether we both exchange something superfluous for something necessary.”

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714–1780) French academic

Le Commerce et le Gouvernement (1776), as quoted in Marx's Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 5.

Question, Nature, Thinking, Parting

“The sentence, 'stopping the printing presses,' is a figurative expression, because it is being done now by creating credit by the Federal Reserve System. But this is government action — all inflation is ultimately the result of activities which government determines and can control. And all inflations have been stopped in the past by the government stopping creating money, or preventing the central bank from creating more money. May I add just one thing? See, all inflations have been stopped by people who created or believed in a very naive form of the Quantity Theory, and acted on that. It may be wrong, but it is the only adequate theory effective to stop an inflation.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1975 interview https://mises.org/library/hayek-meets-press-1975 on "Meet the Press." 1960s–1970s

Money, People, Past

“Distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth, between its costs and return, and between the short and the long term. Goals for more growth should specify more growth of what and for what.”

Simon Kuznets (1901–1985) economist

Simon Kuznets in: Herbert David Croly eds. (1962) The New Republic Vol. 147. p. 29: About rethinking the system of national accounting

“There is no city, country-side, or castle, nor any place in all Romagna, nor officer or minister of the duke's, who does not know of these abuses; and, amongst others, the famine of wheat occasioned by the traffic which he held against our express prohibition, sending out such quantities as would abundantly have sufficed for the people and the army.”

Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) Duke of Romagna and former Catholic cardinal

Cesare's publication on the corrupt practices of Ramiro de Lorqua (December, 1502) as quoted by Rafael Sabatini, 'The Life of Cesare Borgia', Chapter XVI: Ramiro De Lorqua

People, Country

“The post-war "publish or perish" tyranny must end. The profession has become obsessed with quantity rather than quality. […] One brilliant article should outweigh one mediocre book.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 237

War, Books

“[Another significant aspect of the concept of growth is the distinction that Mesarovic and Pestel draw between "undifferentiated" and "organic" growth. The former type of growth, according to these authors, consists of mere replication of cells by cellular division, usually expotentially, with an increase in quantity alone. The latter type of growth] involves a process of differentiation, which means that various groups of cells begin to differ in structure and function… During and after differentiation the number of cells can still increase, and the organs grow in size, but while some organs grow, others might celine.”

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (1928) Serbian academic

As cited in: Joel Jay Kassiola (1990) The Death of Industrial Civilization. p. 48
Mankind at the Turning Point, (1974)

Drawing

“Nobilities, indecencies, heroic impulses, cowardly ravings, good and bad, white and black — the mystery of mysteries, the central island of nescience in a sea of science, the dark spot in the lighted room of knowledge, the unknown quantity, the X in the universal problem.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), The Human Heart

Knowledge, Problem, Light, Universe

“When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Section 12 : Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy Pt. 3
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

School

“Nor can private counterparties restrict supplies of gold, another commodity whose derivatives are often traded over-the-counter, where central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Testimony Before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives July 24, 1998 http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/1998/19980724.htm. 1990s

“Mass man is a phenomenon of electric speed, not of physical quantity.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Access, Issues 165-176, National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting, 1984, p. xxiii
1980s

Speed

“Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much, if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?…I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing; but the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing; but the man who lives the span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning- that, I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here.”

Chaim Potok book The Chosen

David Malter to his son, Reuven (p. 217)
The Chosen (1967)

Life, Pain, World, Understanding

“Vast quantities of U. S. bombers, tanks and guns have been sent against Ho Chi Minh and his freedom-fighters; and now we are told that soon it will be 'advisable' to send America GI's into Indo-China in order that the tin, rubber and tungsten of Southeast Asia be kept by the "free world"-meaning white Imperialism.”

Paul Robeson (1898–1976) American singer and actor

Source: Paul Robeson Speaks (1978), p. 378

World, Freedom

“Children are given Mozart because of the small quantity of the notes; grown-ups avoid Mozart because of the great quality of the notes.”

Artur Schnabel (1882–1951) Austrian pianist

Source: My Life and Music (1961), p. 122

Children

“It turns out that certain picture shapes don't allow you to use different kinds of quantity distributions of color for different expressions. The quantities and configurations of colors are as important as the colors themselves. When I first started painting circles, I went fairly quickly to a 6-foot square module. I think de Kooning said in an interview or artist's discussion that he only wanted to make gestures as big as his arm could reach. It struck me that he was saying this physical size had to do with the expressive size of the pictures he wanted to make. And as far as I know, when I got to the 6-foot square size, it was right in terms of myself and wasn't too much of a field. Or it was a field, yet it was still physical. And that's why I used it for so long.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Source: Color, Format and Abstract Art' (1977), pp. 99 – 105

Color, Thinking, Painting

“The mosque of 'Amr is highly venerated and widely celebrated. The Friday service is held in it and the road runs through it from east to west. The madrasas [college mosques] of Cairo cannot be counted for multitude. As for the Maristan [hospital], which lies "between the two castles" near the mausoleum of Sultan Qala'un, no description is adequate to its beauties. It contains an innumerable quantity of appliances and medicaments, and its daily revenue is put as high as a thousand dinars.”

Ibn Battuta (1304–1377) Moroccan explorer

Travels in Asia and Africa (Rehalã of Ibn Battûta)

Beauty

“I want to acclaim the day when America is the most eminent of the shipping nations. A big navy and a big merchant marine are necessary to the future of the country…The United States, before the war, never seriously contested and had no thought of contesting Great Britain’s dominance in shipping, but since, as an incident of the war, we installed a huge shipbuilding plant and became the owners of what was, for us, an unprecedented quantity of tonnage, we have come to be ambitious in this field. If the aggregate mind of our business world were distilled, it would probably be found, consciously or unconsciously, that we now have a national ambition to contest Great Britain’s shipping dominance. If we are to achieve a position in shipping and foreign trade comparable with that which Great Britain has had for many generations, we can only do so through time, patience, and the building up of the reputation for commercial skill and integrity that makes Great Britain’s prestige in every part of Asia and Africa…We are witnessing and participating in one of those great incidents in world-history which occur only once in several centuries, and which will be a subject for poets and historians for generations to come.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

Speech at Norfolk, Virginia (4 December 1920), quoted in The Times (6 December 1920), p. 17.
1920s

War, World, History, Business

“Everything is soothed by oil, and this is the reason why divers send out small quantities of it from their mouths, because it smooths every part which is rough.”

Pliny the Elder book Natural History

Book II, sec. 234.
Naturalis Historia

Parting

“[…] I observed he [Samuel Johnson] poured a large quantity of it [wine] into a glass, and swallowed it greedily. Everything about his character and manners was forcible and violent; there never was any moderation; many a day did he fast, many a year did he refrain from wine; but when he did eat, it was voraciously; when he did drink wine, it was copiously. He could practise abstinence, but not temperance.”

James Boswell book The Life of Samuel Johnson

March 1781
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791)

Drink, Wine

“The good news is that one of the key elements of being a visionary company is strikingly simple: Good old-fashioned hard work, dedication to improvement, and continually building for the future will take you a long way… The bad news is that creating a visionary company requires huge quantities of good old-fashioned hard work, dedication to improvement, and continually building for the future. There are no shortcuts. There are no magic potions. There are no work-arounds. To build a visionary company, you’ve got to be ready for the long, hard pull. Success is never final.”

James C. Collins book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

Source: Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, 1994, p. 199

Way, Fashion, Success, Future

“It was a biologist — Ludwig von Bertalanffy — who long ago perceived the essential unity of system concepts and techniques in the various fields of science and who in writings and lectures sought to attain recognition for “general systems theory” as a distinct scientific discipline. It is pertinent to note, however, that the work of Bertalannfy and his school, being motivated primarily by problems arising in the study of biological systems, is much more empirical and qualitative in spirit than the work of those system theorists who received their training in exact sciences.
In fact, there is a fairly wide gap between what might be regarded as “animate” system theorists and “inanimate” system theorists at the present time, and it is not at all certain that this gap will be narrowed, much less closed, in the near future.
There are some who feel this gap reflects the fundamental inadequacy of the conventional mathematics—the mathematics of precisely defined points, functions, sets, probability measures, etc.—for coping with the analysis of biological systems, and that to deal effectively with such systems, we need a radically different kind of mathematics, the mathematics of fuzzy or cloudy quantities which are not describable in terms of probability distributions. Indeed the need for such mathematics is becoming increasingly apparent even in the realms of inanimate systems”

Lotfi A. Zadeh (1921–2017) Electrical engineer and computer scientist

Zadeh (1962) "From circuit theory to system theory", Proceedings I.R.E., 1962, 50, 856-865. cited in: Brian R. Gaines (1979) " General systems research: quo vadis? http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~gaines/reports/SYS/GS79/GS79.pdf", General Systems, Vol. 24 (1979), p. 12 1960s

School, Feeling, Mathematics, Motivation

“This great increase of the quantity of work which, in consequence of the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter I

People, Time

“Order gives due measure to the members of a work considered separately, and symmetrical agreement to the proportions of the whole. It is an adjustment according to quantity. By this I mean the selection of modules from the members of the work itself and, starting from these individual parts of members, constructing the whole work to correspond.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter II, Sec. 2

Parting

“Industrial production, the flow of resources in the economy, the exertion of military effort in a war, the management of finances --all require the coordination of interrelated activities. What these complex undertakings share in common is the task of constructing a statement of actions to be performed, their timing and quantity (called a program or schedule), that, if implemented, would move the system from a given initial status as much as possible towards some defined goal”

George Dantzig (1914–2005) American mathematician

George B. Dantzig, Mukund N. Thapa (1997) Linear Programming: 1: Introduction. p.xxi

War, Effort, Time

“What the planning authority would have to know would not be the mere totals but the distinct, peculiar conditions prevailing in each enterprise which affect the information about values transmitted through market prices but would be completely lost in any statistical information about quantities that might reach the authority from time to time.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1980s and later, "Two Pages of Fiction" (1982)

Time

“The danger is that we shall become a nation of pedants. I use the word literally and democratically to refer to the millions of people who are moved by a certain kind of passion in their pastimes as well as in their vocations. In both parts of their lives this passion comes out in shoptalk. I have in mind both the bird watchers and nature lovers: the young people who collect records and follow the lives of pop singers and movie stars; I mean the sort of knowledge possessed by “buffs” and “fans” of all species—the baseball addicts and opera goers, the devotees of railroad trains and the collectors of objects, from first editions to netsuke.
They are pedants not just because they know and recite an enormous quantity of facts—if a school required them to learn as much they would scream against tyranny. It is not the extent of their information that appalls; it is the absence of any reflection upon it, any sense of relation between it and them and the world. Nothing is brought in from outside for contrast or comparison; no perspective is gained from the top of their monstrous factual pile; no generalities emerge to lighten the sameness of their endeavor.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

Source: The Culture We Deserve (1989), p. 118

People, World, School, Star

“As a result of brain evolution, humans managed to develop much more efficient and less risky forms of gaining food than most other carnivorous and omnivorous terrestrial mammals. We do not need now, like our distant ancestors, to go through long periods on the verge of hunger and use all suitable occasions for immoderate consumption "in reserve." Today, in a civilized world, thanks to effective production, we have enough food, and we could consume it rationally, in quantities necessary for efficient functioning. But after our ancestors, we have a deeply ingrained habit of "gorging", especially if the food is attractive. Together with prosperity, the world has overcome an epidemic of obesity and overweight.”

Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017) Polish scientist

Vetulani, Jerzy (18 February 2013): Stary tata, tłusty syn http://vetulani.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/stary-tata-tlusty-syn/. Vetulani.wordpress.com (in Polish).

Hunger, World, Food, Distant

“Number is different from quantity.”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

Source: Mind and Nature, a necessary unity, 1988, p. 118

“Any large-scale organization must lose some of the merits of its rudimentary beginnings. Quantity will have a coarsening effect on quality.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Augustus (1937)

“During the Cold War, widespread alcoholism was always seen in the West as evidence that life under Communism was so dismal that Russians needed large quantities of vodka to get through the day. Under capitalism, however, Russians drinks more than twice as much alcohol as they used to - and they are reaching for harder painkillers as well.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)

Life, War, Alcohol, Communication

“Literature soon becomes a power, not what it once was, a passion; but literary success, like all others, is only to be obtained, and retained, by labour — and labour and inclination do not always go together. Take all our most eminent writers, and the quantity of work, hard work, they have got through, will be found enormous and perpetual. Literature, as a profession, allows little leisure, and less indulgence.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Literature, Passion, Success

“Books are published with an expectation, if not a desire, that they will be criticised in reviews, and if deemed valuable that parts of them will be used as affording illustrations by way of quotation, or the like, and if the quantity taken be neither substantial nor material, if, as it has been expressed by some Judges, "a fair use" only be made of the publication, no wrong is done and no action can be brought.”

William Wood, 1st Baron Hatherley (1801–1881) Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Chatterton v. Cave (1877), L. R. 3 App. Cas. 492.

Books, Way, Parting

“The method applied by Newton to the grounding of the Infinitesimal Calculus, and which since the beginning of this century has been recognised by the best mathematicians as the only one that furnishes sure results, is the method of limits. The method consists in this, viz., instead of considering a continuous transition from one value of a quantity to another, from one position to another, or, speaking generally, from one determination of a concept to another, one considers in the first place a transition through a finite number of intervals and then allows the number of these intervals to increase so that the distances of two successive points of division all decrease infinitely.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

General Relation of the Concept System of Thesis and Antithesis
Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Success

“It is not of the essence of mathematics to be conversant with the ideas of number and quantity.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. 12; Cited in: Alexander Bain (1870) Logic, p. 191

Mathematics, Idea

“Some persons in Europe carry their notions about cruelty to animals so far as not to allow themselves to eat animal food. Many very intelligent men have, at different times of their lives, abstained wholly from flesh; and this too with very considerable advantage to their health. … The most attentive research which I have been able to make into the health of all these persons induces me to believe that vegetable food is the natural diet of man; I tried it once with very considerable advantage: my strength became greater, my intellect clearer, my power of continued exertion protracted, and my spirits much higher than they were when I lived on a mixed diet. I am inclined to think that the inconvenience which some persons experience from vegetable food is only temporary; a few repeated trials would soon render it not only safe but agreeable, and a disgust to the taste of flesh, under any disguise, would be the result of the experiment. The Carmelites and other religious orders, who subsist only on the productions of the vegetable world, live to a greater age than those who feed on meat, and in general herbivorous persons are milder in their dispositions than other people. The same quantity of ground has been proved to be capable of sustaining a larger and stronger population on a vegetable than on a meat diet; and experience has shewn that the juices of the body are more pure and the viscera much more free from disease in those who live in this simple way. All these facts, taken collectively, point to a period, in the progress of civilization, when men will cease to slay their fellow mortals in the animal world for food, and will tend thereby to realize the fictions of antiquity and the Sybilline oracles respecting the millennium or golden age.”

Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster (1789–1860) British astronomer

Philozoia; or Moral Reflections on the Actual Condition of the Animal Kingdom, and on the Means of Improving the same, Brussels: Deltombe and W. Todd, 1839, pp. 42 https://books.google.it/books?id=hdVq93Ypgu0C&pg=PA42-43.

Men, People, Health, Age

“I am convinced that the unwritten knowledge scattered among men of different callings surpasses in quantity and in importance anything we find in books, and that the greater part of our wealth has yet to be recorded.”

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

Pour ce qui est des connaissances non-écrites qui se trouvent dispersées parmi les hommes de différents professions, je suis persuadé qu’ils passent de beaucoup tant à l'égard de la multitude que de l'importance, tout ce qui se trouve marqué dans les livres, et que la meilleure partie de notre trésor n'est pas encore enregistrée.
Discours touchant la méthode de la certitude et de l'art d'inventer pour finir les disputes et pour faire en peu de temps de grands progrès (1688–1690)

Men, Books, Knowledge, Parting