Top 86 Quotes & Sayings by Edwin Land
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American inventor Edwin Land.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.
Any problem can be solved using the materials in the room.
If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it and don't think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; it is amazing how quickly you get through those 5,000 steps.
Politeness is the poison of collaboration.
An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.
Science is a method to keep yourself from kidding yourself.
Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.
It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.
The most important thing about power is to make sure you don't have to use it.
Marketing is what you do when your product is no good.
It is a curious property of research activity that after the problem has been solved the solution seems obvious. This is true not only for those who have not previously been acquainted with the problem, but also for those who have worked over it for years.
Work only on problems that are manifestly important and seem to be nearly impossible to solve. That way you will have a natural market for your product and no competition.
Over the years, I have learned that every significant invention has several characteristics. By definition it must be startling, unexpected, and must come into a world that is not prepared for it. If the world were prepared for it, it would not be much of an invention.
There's a rule they don't teach you at the Harvard Business School. It is, if anything is worth doing, it's worth doing to excess.
Who can object to a monopoly when any new company, if it is built around a scientific nucleus, can create a new monopoly of its own by creating a wholly new field?
Any problem can be solved as long as it is stated properly.
It is a curious property of research activity that after the problem has been solved the solution seems obvious.
The process must be concealed from - non-existent for - the photographer, who by definition need think of the art in the taking and not in the making photographs... In short, all that should be necessary to get a good picture is to take a good picture.
A premature attempt to explain something that thrills you will destroy your perceptivity rather than increase it, because your tendency will be to explain away rather than seek out.
The very essence of democracy is the absolute faith that while people must cooperate, the first function of democracy, its peculiar gift, is to develop each individual into everything that he might be.
All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what we must do tomorrow. Only what we must not do.
Don't do anything that someone else can do.
Colour is always a consequence, never a cause.
In a few wretched buildings, we created a whole new industry with international significance.
The first thing you do is teach the person to feel that the vision is very important and nearly impossible. That draws out the drive in the winner.
True creativity is characterized by a succession of acts each dependent on the one before and suggesting the one after.
Fifty years after we undertook to make the first synthetic polarizers we find them the essential layer in digital liquid-crystal. And thirty four years after we undertook to make the first instant camera and film, our kind of photography has become ubiquitous.
If you are able to state a problem - any problem - and if it is important enough, then the problem can be solved.
An invention that is quickly accepted will turn out to be a rather trivial alteration of something that has already existed.
The second great product of industry should be the rewarding life for every person
A mistake is a future benefit, the full value of which is yet to be realized.
[The Polaroid camera is] a system that will be a partner in perception, enabling us to see the objects in the world around us more vividly than we can see them without it, a system to be an aid to memory and a tool for exploration.
My motto is very personal and may not fit anyone else or any other company. It is: Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.
I have long aspired to make our company a noble prototype of industry, penetrating in science, reliable in engineering, creative in aesthetics and wholesomely prosperous in economics.
...from this day forward until the day you are buried, do two things each day. First, master a difficult old insight, and second, add some new piece of knowledge to the world each day.
We live in a world changing so rapidly that what we mean frequently by common sense is doing the thing that would have been right last year.
You always start with a fantasy. Part of the fantasy technique is to visualize something as perfect. Then with the experiments you work back from the fantasy to reality, hacking away at the components.
Famous in our circles is the story of the visiting English banker who in 1948 upon seeing our model 95 camera commented, 'Very interesting, but why would one want a picture in a minute?'
I submit to you that when in each man the dream of personal greatness dies, democracy loses the real source of its future strength.
We can be dramatic, even theatrical; we can be persuasive; but the message we are telling must be true.
Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.
The future may require not so much having a new idea as stopping having an old idea.
A significant inventionmust be startling, unexpected. It must come to a world that is not prepared for it.
We took nothing from anybody. We gave a great deal to the world. The only thing keeping us alive is our brilliance. The only thing that keeps our brilliance alive is our patents.
The world is like a fertile field that's waiting to be harvested. The seeds have been planted, and what I do is go out and help plant more seeds and harvest them.
Industry is best at the intersection of science and art.
A mistake is an event, the full benefit of which has not yet been turned to your advantage.
You must expect failure after failure after failure before you succeed.
In this country, there is an opportunity for the development of man's intellectual, cultural, and spiritual potentialities that has never existed before in the history of our species. I mean not simply an opportunity for greatness for a few, but an opportunity for greatness for the many.
One of the best ways to keep a great secret is to shout it.
I believe each incoming freshman [in college] must be started at once on his own research project if we are to preserve his secret dream of greatness and make it come true.
The present is the past biting into the future.
[A Polaroid camera] places before you a thing that is more of the thing than the thing was.
We took on things which people might think would take a year or two. They weren't particularly hard. What was hard was believing they weren't hard.
There is no such thing as group originality, group creativity or group perspicacity.
This is the most exciting part of being human. It is using our brains in the highest way. Otherwise we are just healthy animals
Someone is going to make your product obsolete. Make sure it's you.
As I review the nature of the creative drive in the inventive scientists that have been around me, as well as in myself, I find the first event is an urge to make a significant intellectual contribution that can be tangible embodied in a product or process.
The world belongs to the articulate.
Intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out resources in people that they didn't know they had.
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