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I had many books and I had dreams of all kinds. Dreams in which were in a certain sense, how to say, easy to make because the near future was always extremely threatening.

Benoit Mandelbrot

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

Complexity Formulas Simple
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.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Different Mathematician Uncles Want
Unfortunately, the world has not been designed for the convenience of mathematicians.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Convenience Mathematician World
I had very, very little training in taking an exam to determine a scientist’s life in France.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

France Littles Training
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.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Lines Pieces Self
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.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Circles Lines Shapes
Engineering is too important to wait for science.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Engineering Important Waiting
I 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 MANDELBROT

Country Jobs Professor Realized Satisfactory Way
Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Circles Clouds Mountain
If one takes the kinds of risks which I took, which are colossal, but taking risks, I was rewarded by being able to contribute in a very substantial fashion to a variety of fields. I was able to reawaken and solve some very old problems.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Able Colossal Fashion Kind Rewarded Risk
If you assume continuity, you can open the well-stocked mathematical toolkit of continuous functions and differential equations, the saws and hammers of engineering and physics for the past two centuries (and the foreseeable future).
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Nature Past Science
$Benoit Mandelbrot Quote - When people ask me what’s my field? I say, on one hand, a fractalist. Perhaps the only one, the only full-time one.$

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

Field Hands People
My fate has been that what I undertook was fully understood only after the fact.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Facts Fate Understood
Nobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Deny Everywhere Roughness
The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Choices Discipline Intellectual
An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in inventing something.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Arrogance Claims Firsts

I had many books and I had dreams of all kinds. Dreams in which were in a certain sense, how to say, easy to make because the near future was always extremely threatening.

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I had many books and I had dreams of all kinds. Dreams in which were in a certain sense, how to say, easy to make because the near future was always extremely threatening.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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