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A significant inventionmust be startling, unexpected. It must come to a world that is not prepared for it.

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
Acceptance
Significant
Prepared
Science
Come
Startling
Must
Unexpected
World
Preparation
Invention

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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.
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The bottom line is in heaven!
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We can be dramatic, even theatrical we can be persuasive but the message we are telling must be true.
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An invention that is quickly accepted will turn out to be a rather trivial alteration of something that has already existed.
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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 an event, the full benefit of which has not yet been turned to your advantage.
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It is a curious property of research activity that after the problem has been solved the solution seems obvious.
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[A Polaroid camera] places before you a thing that is more of the thing than the thing was.
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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.
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I don't mind conducting the orchestra if I can play the violin.
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Science is a method to keep yourself from kidding yourself.
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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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It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.
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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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The test of an invention is the power of an inventor to push it through in the face of staunch-not opposition, but indifference-in society.
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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.
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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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A mistake is a future benefit, the full value of which is yet to be realized.
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You cannot separate the composition from the life of the moment. It is all one thing, to be decided in a split second while you're living through it.
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Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.
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