“Now that I near 80, I realize with wistful pleasure that on many occasions I was 10, 20, 40, even 50 years ahead of my time.”

Everything is roughness, except for the circles. How many circles are there in nature? Very, very few. The straight lines. Very shapes are very, very smooth. But geometry had laid them aside because they were too complicated.

A fractal is a way of seeing infinity.

The straight line has a property of self-similarity. Each piece of the straight line is the same as the whole line when used to a big or small extent.

Order doesn’t come by itself.

My life has been extremely complicated. Not by choice at the beginning at all, but later on, I had become used to complication and went on accepting things that other people would have found too difficult to accept.

Self-similarity is a dull subject because you are used to very familiar shapes. But that is not the case. Now many shapes which are self-similar again, the same seen from close by and far away, and which are far from being straight or plane or solid.

The theory of probability is the only mathematical tool available to help map the unknown and the uncontrollable. It is fortunate that this tool, while tricky, is extraordinarily powerful and convenient.

When people ask me what’s my field? I say, on one hand, a fractalist. Perhaps the only one, the only full-time one.

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…

College. I didn’t even realize it was carefree at the time, but looking back, that was the most carefree time ever.

For us, genocide was the gas chamber – what happened in Germany. We were not able to realize that with the machete you can create a genocide.

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t said something foolish. It is then that I realize the power of mime.

What’s gonna happen to the arms industry when we realize we’re all one. Ha ha ha ha ha! It’s gonna fuck up the economy!

Since the whole village was poor, we didnt realize our own poverty. I was happy.

I worked out of desperation. I used to hit fast and run in hopes that people wouldn’t realize that I really couldn’t do anything.

Realize that from the start, every activity that comprises the journey has value and the ability to teach you something.

Whereas a novice makes moves until he gets checkmated (proof), a Grand Master realizes 20 moves in advance that it’s futile to continue playing (conceptualizing).