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Why do I want to believe what I believe?... Science, to put it somewhat vulgarly, is a technique to keep yourself from kidding yourself.

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
Technique
Science
Keep
Believe
Thinking
Vulgarly
Kidding
Somewhat

More quotes by Edwin Land

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A mistake is an event, the full benefit of which has not yet been turned to your advantage.
Edwin Land
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A mistake is a future benefit, the full value of which is yet to be realized.
Edwin Land
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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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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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The world belongs to the articulate.
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
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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.
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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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.
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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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.
Edwin Land
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Colour is always a consequence, never a cause.
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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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.
Edwin Land
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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!
Edwin Land
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Do not do anything that anyone else can do readily.
Edwin Land
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Don't do anything that someone else can do.
Edwin Land
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Profundity and originality are attributes of single, if not singular, minds.
Edwin Land
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The bottom line is in heaven!
Edwin Land
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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.
Edwin Land