"For a thinking person, the most serious mental illness is not being sure of who you are."
- Benoit Mandelbrot
"A man is known by his heroes."
- Benoit Mandelbrot
"For most of my life, one of the persons most baffled by my own work was myself."
- Benoit Mandelbrot
"My life seemed to be a series of events and accidents. Yet when I look back I see a pattern."
- Benoit Mandelbrot
"But the financial industry is supremely pragmatic. While it may genuflect to the old icons, it invests its research dollars in the search for newer, better gods."
- Benoit Mandelbrot
"Regardless, one cannot help but marvel that the movement of security prices, the motion of molecules, and the diffusion of heat could all be of the same mathematical species. As will be seen, it is one of many such strange liaisons in nature."
- Benoit Mandelbrot
"Time does not run in a straight line, like the markings on a wooden ruler. It stretches and shrinks, as if the ruler were made of balloon rubber. This is true in daily life: We perk up during high drama, nod off when bored. Markets do the same."
- Benoit Mandelbrot
"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
- Cicero
"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."
- Cicero
"Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do."