Quote

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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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
Something
Fantasy
Always
Start
Perfect
Away
Visualize
Reality
Hacking
Part
Components
Back
Experiments
Work
Technique

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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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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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 Polaroid camera] places before you a thing that is more of the thing than the thing was.
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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Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.
Edwin Land
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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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In a few wretched buildings, we created a whole new industry with international significance.
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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Our society is changing so rapidly that none of us can know what it is or where it is going.
Edwin Land
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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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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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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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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.
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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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
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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.
Edwin Land
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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.
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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A mistake is a future benefit, the full value of which is yet to be realized.
Edwin Land