American scientist and inventor (1909-1991)
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 H. LAND
"A Genius and His Magic Camera", LIFE Magazine, October 27, 1975
There's a tremendous popular fallacy which holds that significant research can be carried out by trying things. Actually it is easy to show that in general no significant problem can be solved empirically, except for accidents so rare as to be statistically unimportant. One of my jests is to say that we work empirically -- we use bull's eye empiricism. We try everything, but we try the right thing first!
EDWIN H. LAND
attributed, The Journal of Imaging Science and Technology, 1992
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?
EDWIN H. LAND
"Research by the Business Itself", The Future of Industrial Research: Papers and Discussion
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 H. LAND
address at MIT, "Generation of Greatness: The Idea of a University in an Age of Science", May 22, 1957
We can be dramatic, even theatrical; we can be persuasive; but the message we are telling must be true.
EDWIN H. LAND
attributed, "Edwin H. Land: Science and Public Policy", November 9, 1991
The bottom line is in Heaven.
EDWIN H. LAND
speech at Polaroid Corporation shareholders' meeting, April 26, 1977
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 H. LAND
"A Talk with Polaroid's Dr. Edwin Land", Forbes, April 1, 1975
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 H. LAND
address at MIT, "Generation of Greatness: The Idea of a University in an Age of Science", May 22, 1957
[The Polaroid camera is] a system that will be a partner in perception, enabling us to see the objects in the world around us more vividly than we can see them without it, a system to be an aid to memory and a tool for exploration.
EDWIN H. LAND
attributed, Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land
Don't do anything that someone else can do.
EDWIN H. LAND
"The Vindication of Edwin Land", Forbes, May 4, 1987
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 H. LAND
address at MIT, "Generation of Greatness: The Idea of a University in an Age of Science", May 22, 1957
The world belongs to the articulate.
EDWIN H. LAND
attributed, Quips, Quotes and Savvy Sayings: A Resource for Lovers of the Language
One feels, when among our young students, that they are honest and honorable and full of ideals, that they come to the door of our universities with the dream of being our colleagues; that if we could provide them intimate leadership there would be no discipline to which they would not subject themselves and no task so arduous in the pursuit of knowledge and science that they would not devote themselves fully to it. But if we imply, as I believe we do by our present attitude, that we do not have this kind of faith in them, then their own strength wanes and they cannot believe the best of themselves.
EDWIN H. LAND
address at MIT, "Generation of Greatness: The Idea of a University in an Age of Science", May 22, 1957
Ordinarily when we talk about the human as the advanced product of evolution and the mind as being the most advanced product of evolution, there is an implication that we are advanced out of and away from the structure of the exterior world in which we have evolved, as if a separate product had been packaged, wrapped up, and delivered from a production line. The view I am presenting proposes a mechanism more and more interlocked with the totality of the exterior. This mechanism has no separate existence at all, being in a thousand ways united with and continuously interacting with the whole exterior domain. In fact there is no exterior red object with a tremendous mind linked to it by only a ray of light. The red object is a composite product of matter and mechanism evolved in permanent association with a most elaborate interlock. There is no tremor in what we call the "outside world" that is not locked by a thousand chains and gossamers to inner structures that vibrate and move with it and are a part of it.
EDWIN H. LAND
address to the Society of Photographic Scientists and Engineers in Los Angeles, California, May 5, 1977
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.
EDWIN H. LAND
address to Polaroid Corporation employees at Symphony Hall in Boston, Massachusetts, February 5, 1960
If you are able to state a problem, it can be solved.
EDWIN H. LAND
LIFE Magazine, October 27, 1972
The great contribution of science is to demonstrate that a person can regard the world as chaos, but can find in himself a method of perceiving, within that chaos, small arrangements of order, that out of himself, and out of the order that previous scientists have generated, he can make things that are exciting and thrilling to make, that are deeply spiritual contributions to himself and to his friends. The scientist comes to the world and says, "I do not understand the divine source, but I know, in a way that I don't understand, that out of chaos I can make order, out of loneliness I can make friendship, out of ugliness I can make beauty."
EDWIN H. LAND
address at MIT, "Generation of Greatness: The Idea of a University in an Age of Science", May 22, 1957
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 H. LAND
attributed, The Icarus Paradox: How Exceptional Companies Bring About Their Own Downfall
As I visualize it, the business of the future will be a scientific, social and economic unit. It will be vigorously creative in pure science where its contributions will compare with those of the universities.
EDWIN H. LAND
statement to the U.S. Senate Military Affairs Committee at the Joint Hearings on Science Bills, October 1945
The role of science is to be systematic, to be accurate, to be orderly, but it certainly is not to imply that the aggregated, successful hypotheses of the past have the kind of truth that goes into a number system.
EDWIN H. LAND
address at MIT, "Generation of Greatness: The Idea of a University in an Age of Science", May 22, 1957