Edwin Land

Work only on problems that are manifestly important and seem to be nearly impossible to solve. That way you will have a…

— Edwin Land

...from this day forward until the day you are buried, do two things each day. First, master a difficult old insight, and…

— Edwin Land

All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what…

— Edwin Land

I believe each incoming freshman [in college] must be started at once on his own research project if we are to preserve…

— Edwin Land

Do not do anything that anyone else can do readily.

— Edwin Land

[The Polaroid camera is] a system that will be a partner in perception, enabling us to see the objects in the world…

— Edwin Land

Aladdin in his most intoxicated moments would never have dreamed of asking his [djinn] for [a polaroid] ... It's utterly new in…

— Edwin Land

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

— Edwin Land

The role of science is to be systematic, to be accurate, to be orderly, but it certainly is not to imply that…

— Edwin Land

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

— Edwin Land

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

— Edwin Land

The first thing you do is teach the person to feel that the vision is very important and nearly impossible. That draws…

— Edwin Land

Every creative act is a sudden cessation of stupidity.

— Edwin Land

It is a curious property of research activity that after the problem has been solved the solution seems obvious. This is true…

— Edwin Land

We live in a world changing so rapidly that what we mean frequently by common sense is doing the thing that would…

— Edwin Land

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

— Edwin Land

In this country, there is an opportunity for the development of man's intellectual, cultural, and spiritual potentialities that has never existed before…

— Edwin Land

Politeness is the poison of collaboration.

— Edwin Land

The test of an invention is the power of an inventor to push it through in the face of staunch-not opposition, but…

— Edwin Land

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

— Edwin Land

You cannot separate the composition from the life of the moment. It is all one thing, to be decided in a split…

— Edwin Land

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

— Edwin Land

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

— Edwin Land

Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.

— 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…

— Edwin Land