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

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.

Smooth shapes are very rare in the wild but extremely important in the ivory tower and the factory.

Order doesn't come by itself.

There is a joke that your hammer will always find nails to hit. I find that perfectly acceptable.

There is a saying that every nice piece of work needs the right person in the right place at the right time.

When the weather changes, nobody believes the laws of physics have changed. Similarly, I don't believe that when the stock market goes into terrible gyrations its rules have changed.

The techniques I developed for studying turbulence, like weather, also apply to the stock market.

For much of my life there was no place where the things I wanted to investigate were of interest to anyone.

My fate has been that what I undertook was fully understood only after the fact.

Although computer memory is no longer expensive, there's always a finite size buffer somewhere. When a big piece of news arrives, everybody sends a message to everybody else, and the buffer fills.

I don't seek power and do not run around.

Nobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere.

Most were beginning to feel they had learned enough to last for the rest of their lives. They remained mathematicians, but largely went their own way.

Until a few years ago, the topics in my Ph.D. were unfashionable, but they are very popular today.

I was in an industrial laboratory because academia found me unsuitable.

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

Think of color, pitch, loudness, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics.

Now that I near 80, I realize with wistful pleasure that on many occasions I was 10, 20, 40, even 50 years ahead of my time.

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

Fractal geometry is not just a chapter of mathematics but one that helps Everyman to see the same world differently.

This administration in Washington... clearly believes that government is not only the answer to every need but it's the most qualified to make essential decisions for every American in every area. That mix of arrogance and audacity that guides the Obama administration is an affront to every freedom-loving American.

Bush promised a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion. He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel.

I would like to see us get this place right first before we have the arrogance to put significantly flawed civilizations out onto other planets, even though they may be utterly uninhabited.

What annoys the hell out of me is the arrogance of some people. They don't even listen to our music, they decided in advance that they don't like it.

I'm Billy the Kid, the fastest draw. It's not arrogance. It's the truth.

It is not a sign of arrogance for the king to rule. That is what he is there for.

Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change.

Science moves with the spirit of an adventure characterized both by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty.

Timing and arrogance are decisive factors in the successful use of talent.

There is a marvelous turn and trick to British arrogance; its apparent unconsciousness makes it twice as effectual.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities.

We had every problems starting a big top could have. The tent fell down on the first day. We had problems getting people into the shows. It was only with the courage and arrogance of youth that we survived.

Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves.

What moves me is neither ethnocentric pride nor sectarian arrogance. I make no claim that Jewish culture is superior to other cultures. But it is mine.

The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall.

This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.

If you're a director, your entire livelihood and your entire creativity is based on your self-confidence. Sometimes that's dangerously close to arrogance.

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.

Honest discussions - even and perhaps especially on topics about which we disagree - can help us resist hypocrisy and arrogance. They can also help us live up to the basic ideals, such as liberty and justice for all, on which our country was founded.

The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, the public debt should be reduced and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled.

This searching and doubting and vacillating where nothing is clear but the arrogance of quest. I, too, had such noble ideas when I was still a boy.

All too often arrogance accompanies strength, and we must never assume that justice is on the side of the strong. The use of power must always be accompanied by moral choice.

As an artist you have to have a certain amount of arrogance.

Watching President Obama apologize last week for America's arrogance - before a French audience that owes its freedom to the sacrifices of Americans - helped convince me that he has a deep-seated antipathy toward American values and traditions.

Stupidity combined with arrogance and a huge ego will get you a long way.

The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.

Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.