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In a few wretched buildings, we created a whole new industry with international significance.

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
Wretched
Significance
International
Created
Industry
Building
Whole
Buildings

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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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The most important thing about power is to make sure you don't have to use it.
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I don't mind conducting the orchestra if I can play the violin.
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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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The future may require not so much having a new idea as stopping having an old idea.
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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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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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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[A Polaroid camera] places before you a thing that is more of the thing than the thing was.
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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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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Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.
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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Do not do anything that anyone else can do readily.
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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A mistake is an event, the full benefit of which has not yet been turned to your advantage.
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