Edwin Land Quotes

It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.

[A Polaroid camera] places before you a thing that is more of the thing than the thing was.

Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.

Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.

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.

Someone is going to make your product obsolete. Make sure it's you.

A mistake is an event, the full benefit of which has not yet been turned to your advantage.

Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.

Any problem can be solved as long as it is stated properly.

You must expect failure after failure after failure before you succeed.

Politeness is the poison of collaboration.

Science is a method to keep yourself from kidding yourself.

We can be dramatic, even theatrical; we can be persuasive; but the message we are telling must be true.

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.

There is no such thing as group originality, group creativity or group perspicacity.

An invention that is quickly accepted will turn out to be a rather trivial alteration of something that has already existed.

This is the most exciting part of being human. It is using our brains in the highest way. Otherwise we are just healthy animals

The most important thing about power is to make sure you don't have to use it.

The world is like a fertile field that's waiting to be harvested. The seeds have been planted, and what I do is go out and help plant more seeds and harvest them.

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.

Any problem can be solved using the materials in the room.

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.

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.

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.

The bottom line is in heaven!

Intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out resources in people that they didn't know they had.

...from this day forward until the day you are buried, do two things each day. First, master a difficult old insight, and second, add some new piece of knowledge to the world each day.

The world belongs to the articulate.

I submit to you that when in each man the dream of personal greatness dies, democracy loses the real source of its future strength.

Colour is always a consequence, never a cause.

Don't do anything that someone else can do.

All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what we must do tomorrow. Only what we must not do.

If you are able to state a problem - any problem - and if it is important enough, then the problem can be solved.

The present is the past biting into the future.

A significant inventionmust be startling, unexpected. It must come to a world that is not prepared for it.

Who can object to a monopoly when any new company, if it is built around a scientific nucleus, can create a new monopoly of its own by creating a wholly new field?

Do not do anything that anyone else can do readily.

Profundity and originality are attributes of single, if not singular, minds.

Industry is best at the intersection of science and art.

A mistake is a future benefit, the full value of which is yet to be realized.

We took nothing from anybody. We gave a great deal to the world. The only thing keeping us alive is our brilliance. The only thing that keeps our brilliance alive is our patents.

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.

The second great product of industry should be the rewarding life for every person

One of the best ways to keep a great secret is to shout it.

True creativity is characterized by a succession of acts each dependent on the one before and suggesting the one after.

The future may require not so much having a new idea as stopping having an old idea.

Famous in our circles is the story of the visiting English banker who in 1948 upon seeing our model 95 camera commented, 'Very interesting, but why would one want a picture in a minute?'

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

It only takes a day to change someone from an anti-intellectual to an intellectual by persuading him that he might be one!

We took on things which people might think would take a year or two. They weren't particularly hard. What was hard was believing they weren't hard.