113 Quotes by Benoit Mandelbrot

The Mandelbrot set is the most complex mathematical object known to mankind.

If you have a hammer, use it everywhere you can, but I do not claim that everything is fractal.

I conceived, developed and applied in many areas a new geometry of nature, which finds order in chaotic shapes and processes. It grew without a name until 1975, when I coined a new word to denote it, fractal geometry, from the Latin word for irregular and broken up, fractus. Today you might say that, until fractal geometry became organized, my life had followed a fractal orbit.

In fact, I barely missed being number one in France in both schools. In particular I did very well in mathematical problems.

Asking the right questions is as important as answering them

Science would be ruined if (like sports) it were to put competition above everything else, and if it were to clarify the rules of competition by withdrawing entirely into narrowly defined specialties. The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines.

I had very, very little training in taking an exam to determine a scientist's life in France.

For most of my life, one of the persons most baffled by my own work was myself.

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