If you assume continuity, you can open the well-stocked mathematical toolkit of continuous functions and differential equations, the saws and hammers of engineering and physics for the past two centuries (and the foreseeable future).

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.

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."

I've been a professor of mathematics at Harvard and at Yale. At Yale for a long time. But I'm not a mathematician only. I'm a professor of physics, of economics, a long list. Each element of this list is normal. The combination of these elements is very rare at best.

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

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.

Nobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere