“I didn’t feel comfortable at first with pure mathematics, or as a professor of pure mathematics. I wanted to do a little bit of everything and explore the world.”

I didn’t want to become a pure mathematician, as a matter of fact, my uncle was one, so I knew what the pure mathematician was and I did not want to be a pure – I wanted to do something different.

The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines.

Being a language, mathematics may be used not only to inform but also, among other things, to seduce.

Asking the right questions is as important as answering them

If you have a hammer, use it everywhere you can, but I do not claim that everything is fractal.

Nobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere

The theory of chaos and theory of fractals are separate, but have very strong intersections. That is one part of chaos theory is geometrically expressed by fractal shapes.

A fractal is a mathematical set or concrete object that is irregular or fragmented at all scales…

I don’t seek power and do not run around

I went to the computer and tried to experiment. I introduced a very high level of experiment in very pure mathematics.

A formula can be very simple, and create a universe of bottomless complexity.

In mathematics and science definition are simple, but bare-bones. Until you get to a problem which you understand it takes hundreds and hundreds of pages and years and years of learning.

Why is geometry often described as cold and dry? One reason lies in its inability to describe the shape of a cloud, a mountain, a coastline or a tree.

Think of color, pitch, loudness, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics

I’ve been a professor of mathematics at Harvard and at Yale. At Yale for a long time. But I’m not a mathematician only. I’m a professor of physics, of economics, a long list. Each element of this list is normal. The combination of these elements is very rare at best.

There is a saying that every nice piece of work needs the right person in the right place at the right time.

There were a lot of fences and walls existing in my life, literally and figuratively, and that was really not indicative of the kind of person that I’d always been. So, when I moved back to Seattle, the first thing I said was, “I will never live in fear again.”

The first rule about a black woman’s hair is you don’t talk about a black woman’s hair. And the second rule is you don’t ever touch a black woman’s hair without getting written permission first.

One of the things that’s great about doing a show over and over again… is that you have to find ways to make it spontaneous, as though everything is happening for the first time… to continue to mine the material and find new things.

To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup.

The United States accused Syria, and because you accused you have to bring evidence [of chemical weapons], this first of all. We have to find evidences when we are there.

I’m a great believer that the most important years are the sort of early years but the preschool years and then into the first and second grades. If you get a good base in the first and second grade and you can read, you can do anything.

Running for money doesn’t make you run fast. It makes you run first.

Maybe Oliver Stone doesn’t lend himself well to remakes or sequels, because he does them so well the first time.