Benoit Mandelbrot Quotes

Quotes about:

• Think not of what you see, but what it took to produce what you see.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Thinking, Produce

  37 Copy quote

• Bottomless wonders spring from simple rules, which are repeated without end.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Spring, Simple, Miracle

  71 Copy quote

• A fractal is a way of seeing infinity.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Way, Infinity, Fractals

  90 Copy quote

• 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

  Nature, Lying, Science

  "Benoît Mandelbrot obituary' by Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon, www.theguardian.com. October 17, 2010.

  74 Copy quote

• Asking the right questions is as important as answering them

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Important, Asking, Asking The Right Questions

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Clouds, Circles, Mountain

  Michael Frame, Benoit Mandelbrot (2002). “Fractals, Graphics, and Mathematics Education”, p.150, Cambridge University Press

  52 Copy quote

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

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Simple, Complexity, Formulas

  31 Copy quote

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

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Science, Engineering, May

  "Fractals: Form, Chance and Dimension". Book by Benoit Mandelbrot, 1977.

  25 Copy quote

• There is a saying that every nice piece of work needs the right person in the right place at the right time.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Nice, Needs, Pieces

  "A Theory of Roughness". Interview with John Brockman, www.edge.org. December 20, 2004.

  11 Copy quote

• Beautiful, damn hard, increasingly useful. That's fractals.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Beautiful, Fractals, Damn

  "Ig Nobels Highlight Science of a Special Kind". "Talk of the Nation: Science Friday", www.npr.org. November 24, 2006.

  41 Copy quote

• 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.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Powerful, Science, Tools

  Benoit B. Mandelbrot (2013). “Fractals and Scaling in Finance: Discontinuity, Concentration, Risk. Selecta Volume E”, p.16, Springer Science & Business Media

  29 Copy quote

• I claim that many patterns of Nature are so irregular and fragmented, that, compared with Euclid - a term used in this work to denote all of standard geometry - Nature exhibits not simply a higher degree but an altogether different level of complexity ... The existence of these patterns challenges us to study these forms that Euclid leaves aside as being "formless," to investigate the morphology of the "amorphous."

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Science, Challenges, Different

  The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 91, No. 9, (p. 594), November 1984.

  4 Copy quote

• Order doesn't come by itself.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Order

  "A Theory of Roughness". Interview with John Brockman, www.edge.org. December 20, 2004.

  5 Copy quote

• Unfortunately, the world has not been designed for the convenience of mathematicians.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  World, Convenience, Mathematician

  Benoit B. Mandelbrot, Richard Hudson (2010). “The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward”, p.41, Profile Books

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Self, Pieces, Lines

  Source: bigthink.com

  6 Copy quote

• Regular geometry, the geometry of Euclid, is concerned with shapes which are smooth, except perhaps for corners and lines, special lines which are singularities, but some shapes in nature are so complicated that they are equally complicated at the big scale and come closer and closer and they don't become any less complicated.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Special, Shapes, Lines

  Source: bigthink.com

  12 Copy quote

• If you look at coastlines, if you look at that them from far away, from an airplane, well, you don't see details, you see a certain complication. When you come closer, the complication becomes more local, but again continues. And come closer and closer and closer, the coastline becomes longer and longer and longer because it has more detail entering in.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Airplane, Details, Looks

  Source: bigthink.com

  16 Copy quote

• 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, Mathematics, Mankind

  18 Copy quote

• I spent half my life, roughly speaking, doing the study of nature in many aspects and half of my life studying completely artificial shapes. And the two are extraordinarily close; in one way both are fractal.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Two, Half, Shapes

  Source: bigthink.com

  8 Copy quote

• There is a joke that your hammer will always find nails to hit. I find that perfectly acceptable

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Nails, Hammers, Acceptable

  "A Theory of Roughness". The Edge Interview, www.edge.org. December 20, 2004.

  18 Copy quote

• 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.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Strong, Shapes, Chaos

  Source: bigthink.com

  20 Copy quote

• The most important thing I have done is to combine something esoteric with a practical issue that affects many people.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Issues, People, Important

  "A fractal life". Interview with Valerie Jamieson, www.newscientist.com. November 10, 2004.

  18 Copy quote

• Many painters had a clear idea of what fractals are. Take a French classic painter named Poussin. Now, he painted beautiful landscapes, completely artificial ones, imaginary landscapes. And how did he choose them? Well, he had the balance of trees, of lawns, of houses in the distance. He had a balance of small objects, big objects, big trees in front and his balance of objects at every scale is what gives to Poussin a special feeling.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Beautiful, Distance, Small Objects

  Source: bigthink.com

  15 Copy quote

• I 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 Mandelbrot

  Science, Numbers, Nomenclature

  72 Copy quote

• Engineering is too important to wait for science.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Engineering, Waiting, Important

  "Fractal Finance". Yale Economic Review, 2005.

  10 Copy quote

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