Edwin Land Quotes

“An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.”

“Politeness is the poison of collaboration.”

“Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.”

“Industry is best at the intersection of science and art.”

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

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

“The world belongs to the articulate.”

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

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

“Fifty years after we undertook to make the first synthetic polarizers we find them the essential layer in digital liquid-crystal.”

“Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.”

“We think of photography as the intersection of science and art.”

“This is the most exciting part of being human. It is using our brains in the highest way.”

“Pick problems that are important and nearly impossible to solve. Pick problems that are the result of sensing deep and possibly unarticulated human needs.”

“He was revered, to an extraordinary extent, by most of the people who worked for him. Most men of Land's stature, particularly those of whom great success has come in the business world, earn their share of detractors. Land's were primarily outside the company, principally in the ranks of financial analysts and reporters.”

“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.”

“The bottom line is in heaven. The real business of business is building things.”

“Fly with your mind without assuming that nature has set a very special trap for you.”

“Not only was Land one of the great inventors of our time, but more importantly, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that. The man is a national treasure.”

“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.”

“Discoveries are made by some individual who has freed himself from a way of thinking that is held by friends and associates who may be more intelligent, better educated, better disciplined, but who have not mastered the art of the fresh, clean look at the old, old knowledge.”