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 Copy Share Image
The most complex object in mathematics, the Mandelbrot Set ... is so complex as to be uncontrollable by mankind and describable as 'chaos'. — Benoit Mandelbrot Copy Share Image
Regular geometry, the geometry of Euclid, is concerned with shapes which are smooth, except perhaps for corners and lines, special lines which are singularities,… — Benoit Mandelbrot Copy Share Image
It was astonishing when at one point, I got the idea of how to make artifical clouds with a collaborator, we had pictures made… — Benoit Mandelbrot Copy Share Image
Pictures were completely eliminated from mathematics; in particular when I was young this happened in a very strong fashion. — Benoit Mandelbrot Copy Share Image
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… — Benoit Mandelbrot Copy Share Image
One of the high points of my life was when I suddenly realized that this dream I had in my late adolescence of combining… — Benoit Mandelbrot Copy Share Image
My life has been extremely complicated. Not by choice at the beginning at all, but later on, I had become used to complication and… — Benoit Mandelbrot Copy Share Image
The extraordinary fact is that the first idea I had which motivated me, that worked, is conjecture, a mathematical idea which may or may… — Benoit Mandelbrot Copy Share Image
Most economists, when modeling market behavior, tend to sweep major fluctuations under the rug and assume they are anomalies. What I have found is… — Benoit Mandelbrot Copy Share Image
I conceived and developed a new geometry of nature and implemented its use in a number of diverse fields. It describes many of the… — Benoit Mandelbrot Copy Share Image
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,… — Benoit Mandelbrot Copy Share Image
When I first began studying prices, it wasn't a topic that mathematicians were working on. Purely by accident, I saw a set of data… — Benoit Mandelbrot Copy Share Image
The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines. — Benoit Mandelbrot Copy Share Image
Science would be ruined if (like sports) it were to put competition above everything else, and if it were to clarify the rules of… — Benoit Mandelbrot Copy Share Image
Many painters had a clear idea of what fractals are. Take a French classic painter named Poussin. Now, he painted beautiful landscapes, completely artificial… — Benoit Mandelbrot Copy Share Image
