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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.

Edwin Land

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Edwin Land
Age: 81 †
Born: 1909
Born: May 7
Died: 1991
Died: March 1
Entrepreneur
Inventor
Photographer
Physicist
Bridgeport
Connecticut
Edwin Land
Edwin Herbert Land
E.H. Land
Learned
Characteristics
Come
Definition
Must
Unexpected
Much
Definitions
Every
Several
Years
Invention
Would
Significant
World
Prepared
Startling

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Marketing is what you do when your product is no good.
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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.
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I submit to you that when in each man the dream of personal greatness dies, democracy loses the real source of its future strength.
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Industry is best at the intersection of science and art.
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I believe quite simply that the small company of the future will be as much a research organization as it is a manufacturing company.
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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.
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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.
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Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.
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Our society is changing so rapidly that none of us can know what it is or where it is going.
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A mistake is a future benefit, the full value of which is yet to be realized.
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Don't do anything that someone else can do.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It only takes a day to change someone from an anti-intellectual to an intellectual by persuading him that he might be one!
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I believe that each young person is different from any other who has ever lived, as different as his fingerprints: that he could bring to the world a wonderful and special way of solving unsolved problems, that in his special way, he can be great.
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Someone is going to make your product obsolete. Make sure it's you.
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