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The most important thing about power is to make sure you don't have to use 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
Make
Sure
Use
Power
Important
Thing

More quotes by Edwin Land

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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.
Edwin Land
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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.
Edwin Land
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In a few wretched buildings, we created a whole new industry with international significance.
Edwin Land
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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.
Edwin Land
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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.
Edwin Land
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Someone is going to make your product obsolete. Make sure it's you.
Edwin Land
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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.
Edwin Land
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Politeness is the poison of collaboration.
Edwin Land
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Don't do anything that someone else can do.
Edwin Land
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Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.
Edwin Land
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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.
Edwin Land
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The world belongs to the articulate.
Edwin Land
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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.
Edwin Land
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It is a curious property of research activity that after the problem has been solved the solution seems obvious.
Edwin Land
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[A Polaroid camera] places before you a thing that is more of the thing than the thing was.
Edwin Land
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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.
Edwin Land
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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.
Edwin Land
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Aladdin in his most intoxicated moments would never have dreamed of asking his [djinn] for [a polaroid] ... It's utterly new in concept and appearance, utilizing an utterly revolutionary flash system, an utterly revolutionary viewing system, utterly revolutionary electronics, and utterly revolutionary film structure.
Edwin Land
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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.
Edwin Land
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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.
Edwin Land