An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in inventing something.
BENOIT MANDELBROTAn extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in inventing something.
BENOIT MANDELBROTI conceived and developed a new geometry of nature and implemented its use in a number of diverse fields. It describes many of the irregular and fragmented patterns around us, and leads to full-fledged theories, by identifying a family of shapes I call fractals.
BENOIT MANDELBROTA fractal is a way of seeing infinity.
BENOIT MANDELBROTWhen people ask me what’s my field? I say, on one hand, a fractalist. Perhaps the only one, the only full-time one.
BENOIT MANDELBROTMy fate has been that what I undertook was fully understood only after the fact.
BENOIT MANDELBROTFor much of my life there was no place where the things I wanted to investigate were of interest to anyone.
BENOIT MANDELBROTBoth chaos theory and fractal have had contacts in the past when they are both impossible to develop and in a certain sense not ready to be developed.
BENOIT MANDELBROTEngineering is too important to wait for science.
BENOIT MANDELBROTThere is a saying that every nice piece of work needs the right person in the right place at the right time.
BENOIT MANDELBROTOrder doesn’t come by itself.
BENOIT MANDELBROTSome mathematicians didn’t even perceive of the possibility of a picture being helpful. To the contrary, I went into an orgy of looking at pictures by the hundreds; the machines became a little bit better.
BENOIT MANDELBROTThe rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines.
BENOIT MANDELBROTWhy 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.
BENOIT MANDELBROTI’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.
BENOIT MANDELBROTI spent my time very nicely in many ways, but not fully satisfactory. Then I became Professor in France, but realized that I was not – for the job that I should spend my life in.
BENOIT MANDELBROTIf you look at a shape like a straight line, what’s remarkable is that if you look at a straight line from close by, from far away, it is the same; it is a straight line.
BENOIT MANDELBROT