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.Benoît B. Mandelbrot
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.Benoît B. Mandelbrot
A cloud is made of billows upon billows upon billows that look like clouds. As you come closer to a cloud you don't get something smooth, but irregularities at a smaller scale.Benoît B. Mandelbrot
Fractal geometry will make you see everything differently. There is a danger in reading further. You risk the loss of your childhood vision of clouds, forests, flowers, galaxies, leaves, feathers, rocks, mountains, torrents of water, carpet, bricks, and much else besides.Benoît B. Mandelbrot
The existence of these patterns (fractals) challenges us to study forms that Euclid leaves aside as being 'formless,' to investigate the morphology of the 'amorphous.'Benoît B. Mandelbrot
Fractals are not only out there, in the sky, in the galaxy, in the trails of subatomic particles. They are also in here...in the way we think, in the way we respond to the world and each other.Benoît B. Mandelbrot
In the end, the clarity that geometry brings to mind is a source of delight.Benoît B. Mandelbrot
I coined the word 'fractal' from the Latin adjective 'fractus'. The corresponding Latin verb 'frangere' means 'to break' to create irregular fragments. It is therefore sensible - and how appropriate for our needs!Benoît B. Mandelbrot
The eye had long since discovered that fractal roughness makes things just a bit fairer, more perceptible, more agreeable.Benoît B. Mandelbrot
My only strength is to have discerned what is elementary and general, where the arbitrariness of each particular fact is conspicuous.Benoît B. Mandelbrot