A mistake is a future benefit, the full value of which is yet to be realized. Edwin Land More Quotes by Edwin Land More Quotes From Edwin Land 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. Edwin Land excessharvardschool This is the most exciting part of being human. It is using our brains in the highest way. Otherwise we are just healthy animals Edwin Land healthanimalscience 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 increasethrillscience If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it and don't think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; it is amazing how quickly you get through those 5,000 steps. Edwin Land emotionaldreamthinking True creativity is characterized by a succession of acts each dependent on the one before and suggesting the one after. Edwin Land successiondependentcreativity 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 liquidphotographyyears There is no such thing as group originality, group creativity or group perspicacity. Edwin Land groupscreativityindividuality 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 democracyessencepeople 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 greatnessrealdream If you are able to state a problem - any problem - and if it is important enough, then the problem can be solved. Edwin Land ableimportantproblem 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. Edwin Land fieldswaitingworld An invention that is quickly accepted will turn out to be a rather trivial alteration of something that has already existed. Edwin Land businessacceptancescience 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 researchscienceyears 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. Edwin Land patentsaliveworld 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 greatnessdreambelieve An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Scientists made a great invention by calling their activities hypotheses and experiments. They made it permissible to fail repeatedly until in the end they got the results they wanted. In politics or government, if you made a hypothesis and it didn't work out, you had your head cut off. Edwin Land creativitycuttinggovernment 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 electronicsrevolutionaryasking When Arthur Ashe plays tennis, his purpose each day is to play the game in a way he has never played it before. It may be a backhand he uses, one that he may never have used before in that circumstance. His play is a fresh integration of his world at the instant of action. A really great scientist has the whole past at his disposal. At any instant he is rebuilding the world, molecule by molecule, in his subconscious. That is what you want in an athlete or a scientist. Edwin Land athletegamespast There's no scientist I know who wouldn't rather be a charlatan. And when circumstances allow you to be both, why it's great fun! Edwin Land scientistcircumstancesfun You cannot separate the composition from the life of the moment. It is all one thing, to be decided in a split second while you're living through it. Edwin Land compositionsplitsmoments
