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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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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
Polaroid
Camera
Cameras
Places
Thing

More quotes by 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.
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Marketing is what you do when your product is no good.
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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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Why do I want to believe what I believe?... Science, to put it somewhat vulgarly, is a technique to keep yourself from kidding yourself.
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A mistake is a future benefit, the full value of which is yet to be realized.
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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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I don't mind conducting the orchestra if I can play the violin.
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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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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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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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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Someone is going to make your product obsolete. Make sure it's you.
Edwin Land
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Industry is best at the intersection of science and art.
Edwin Land
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Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.
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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A mistake is an event, the full benefit of which has not yet been turned to your advantage.
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's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.
Edwin Land
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The future may require not so much having a new idea as stopping having an old idea.
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