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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

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
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.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

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

Arrogance Claims Firsts
For much of my life there was no place where the things I wanted to investigate were of interest to anyone.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

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

Engineering May Science
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.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Case Dull Self Shape Shapes
The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Choices Discipline Intellectual
Bottomless wonders spring from simple rules, which are repeated without end.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Miracle Simple Spring
I had very, very little training in taking an exam to determine a scientist’s life in France.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

France Littles Training
The techniques I developed for studying turbulence, like weather, also apply to the stock market
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Study Technique Weather
Pictures were completely eliminated from mathematics; in particular when I was young this happened in a very strong fashion.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Fashion Happen Mathematics Strong
Think of color, pitch, loudness, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Branches Color Thinking
It was astonishing when at one point, I got the idea of how to make artifical clouds with a collaborator, we had pictures made which were theoretically completely artificial pictures based upon that one very simple idea. And this picture everybody views as being clouds.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Clouds Simple Views
There is a saying that every nice piece of work needs the right person in the right place at the right time.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Needs Nice Pieces
If 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

Lines Looks Shapes Straight
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

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.

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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.

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