Hermann Weyl is widely reported as making the following observation about a compact space:
"If a city is compact, it can be guarded by a finite number of arbitrarily near-sighted policemen."
This was reported in a paper by Edwin Hewitt in a 1960 paper in AMM, and hence more widely propagated since. (I first encountered it in W.A. Sutherland's "Introduction to Metric and Topological Spaces" (Oxford Science Publications, 1975).)
However, I am having difficulty tracking down the precise origin. (Weyl wrote prolifically.)
Does anyone know where he first made that remark?