black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Nobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere

Benoit Mandelbrot

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

Engineering May Science
Unfortunately, the world has not been designed for the convenience of mathematicians.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Convenience Mathematician World
A cloud is made of billows upon billows upon billows that look like clouds. As you come closer to a cloud you don’t get something smooth, but irregularities at a smaller scale.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Clouds Looks Smooth
Engineering is too important to wait for science.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Engineering Important Waiting
I was in an industrial laboratory because academia found me unsuitable
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Academia Found Laboratory
Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dustcloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Facts Observation Order Science
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.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Lying Mountain Nature Science Tree
In fact, I barely missed being number one in France in both schools. In particular I did very well in mathematical problems.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Country Numbers Problem School
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.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Firsts Littles Mathematician Pure World
One couldn’t even measure roughness. So, by luck, and by reward for persistence, I did found the theory of roughness, which certainly I didn’t expect and expecting to found one would have been pure madness.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Luck Persistence Reward
I had very, very little training in taking an exam to determine a scientist’s life in France.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

France Littles Training
The most complex object in mathematics, the Mandelbrot Set … is so complex as to be uncontrollable by mankind and describable as ‘chaos’.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Chaos Mankind Mathematics
Bottomless wonders spring from simple rules, which are repeated without end.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Miracle Simple Spring
An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in inventing something.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Arrogance Claims Firsts
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.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Lists Long Yale
A formula can be very simple, and create a universe of bottomless complexity.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Complexity Formulas Simple

Nobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Nobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Benoit Mandelbrot Quotes