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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
Places
Thing
Polaroid
Camera
Cameras

More quotes by 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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Don't do anything that someone else can do.
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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Science is a method to keep yourself from kidding yourself.
Edwin Land
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I believe that each young person is different from any other who has ever lived, as different as his fingerprints: that he could bring to the world a wonderful and special way of solving unsolved problems, that in his special way, he can be great.
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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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 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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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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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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A significant inventionmust be startling, unexpected. It must come to a world that is not prepared for it.
Edwin Land
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We can be dramatic, even theatrical we can be persuasive but the message we are telling must be true.
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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An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.
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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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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Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.
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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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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Industry is best at the intersection of science and art.
Edwin Land