Benoit Mandelbrot Quotes

You don't get anywhere unless you've had a little bit of a complicated life.

We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.

When you are surrounded by people who are much better than you, you have two choices: You can sh*t the bed, and the performance can go to hell. Or you can step up and rise to the occasion.

My past is my shadow, it follows me everywhere I go. Well, all those things come from when I had no other choice. They put my back against the wall. I do what I gotta do.

Hardships drive some people apart. Others, like us, grow even closer.

I have been confronted with many difficulties throughout the course of my life, and my country is going through a critical period. But I laugh often, and my laughter is contagious. When people ask me how I find the strength to laugh now, I reply that I am a professional laugher.

The pain of problems is a call to find solutions rather than a reason for unhappiness and inaction, so it's silly, pointless, and harmful to be upset at the problems and choices that come at you (though it’s understandable).

Some people as a result of adversity are sadder, wiser, kinder, more human. Most of us are better, though, when things go better.

Instead, it just reminded her that sometimes there were no good choices.

People have to go through things in order to become the person they are today, and that's that.

You've got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice. You've got to keep your mind off pitying your own rotten luck and setting up any kind of a howl about it. You've got to remember that things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they've come through it and that you will too.

The point of the adversity is to toughen your mind so that you can handle difficult circumstances in life. Your mind, toughen just like you toughen your body. So it really depends on what you need. It really depends on the individual.

You’ve got to worry about the next play…Keep believing because people aren’t always going to like you but you have to believe in the people around you…You’re going to get knocked down but it’s how many times you get back up.

Be grateful even for hardship, setbacks, and bad people. Dealing with such obstacles is an essential part of training in the Art of Peace.

I AM VERY MOVED BY SURVIVORS. BY PEOPLE WHO KNOW HOW TO OVERCOME A HANDICAP, A SITUATION, OR ANYTHING. VISITING THE HEARTS AND SOULS OF THOSE PEOPLE TEACHES ME A LOT ABOUT HUMANS AND HUMANITY.

Sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them.

It's amazing when tragedy strikes, how strong you find that you are, and I'd seen other people go through horrible things. And I just thought, "Wow, I would be a complete mess," and then suddenly when it happens, you realize you had more strength than you knew and it helps you to get through.

Looking back, I've learned the most from the bad coaches, really, how not to act, how not to coach, how not to treat people. So I always say no matter what situations you're faced with, how bad it is, you can always walk away and learn. You can always rise above it.

Something very beautiful happens to people when their world's fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor.

We are reviled but we do not intend to speak evil in return. We are in desperate straits but do not despair. We are persecuted but not forsaken. It’s easy to humiliate and crush people who are open, but when I am weak, then I am strong.

The trials and pressures of life--and how we face them--often define us. Confronted by adversity, many people give up while others rise up. How do those who succeed do it? They persevere. They find the benefit to them personally that comes from any trial. And they recognize that the best thing about adversity is coming out on the other side of it. There is a sweetness to overcoming your troubles and finding something good in the process, however small it may be. Giving up when adversity threatens can make a person bitter. Persevering through adversity makes one better.

There are people that don't need to run towards adversity. They grew up in circumstances where it's forced upon them. Other people lead, pushier lives. So there are all kinds of forms of adversity in the world.

When you choose to overcome something that could paralyze people, you have the choice to either let that happen or use that as a stepping-stone to something new and different in the future.

It's important to control yourself because life gets too complicated if you don't, but the impulse is often there for people. Some say society should be more open. That doesn't work either.