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

I didn't feel comfortable at first with pure mathematics, or as a professor of pure mathematics. I wanted to do a little bit of everything and explore the world.

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.

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

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.

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

An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in inventing something.