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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.

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
Must
Essence
People
Democracy
Cooperate
Faith
Peculiar
Individual
Absolutes
Might
Absolute
Firsts
Develop
Everything
Gift
First
Function

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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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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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It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.
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Industry is best at the intersection of science and art.
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Look, if the picture you get instantly is as beautiful as the picture you get by waiting seven days, then it is absolute madness to say that there is virtue in waiting.
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The future may require not so much having a new idea as stopping having an old idea.
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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.
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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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Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.
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Profundity and originality are attributes of single, if not singular, minds.
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A significant inventionmust be startling, unexpected. It must come to a world that is not prepared for it.
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The most important thing about power is to make sure you don't have to use it.
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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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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.
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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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Science is a method to keep yourself from kidding yourself.
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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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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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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.
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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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