Edwin H. Land quotes

Edwin H. Land was an American scientist and inventor, best known for founding the Polaroid Corporation and inventing instant photography. His groundbreaking work with polarized light and instant cameras transformed photography and vision technology. He became a pioneer in both scientific innovation and business leadership. Here are 58 of his quotes:

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

Edwin H. Land

Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.

Edwin H. Land

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

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

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

You always start with a fantasy. Part of the fantasy technique is to visualize something as perfect. Then with the experiments you work back from the fantasy to reality, hacking away at the components.

Edwin H. Land

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.

Edwin H. Land

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

Edwin H. Land

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

Edwin H. Land

What do I mean by the Generation of Greatness? I mean that in this age, in this country, there is an opportunity for the development of man's intellectual, cultural, and spiritual potentialities that has never existed before in the history of our species. I mean not simply an opportunity for greatness for a few, but an opportunity for greatness for the many.

Edwin H. Land

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

Edwin H. Land

Now this error in attitude - mistaking these men for boys - permeates the whole scholastic domain, permeates it so thoroughly that it is hard for anyone within the domain to recognize it. What do I mean by saying that a man is treated as a boy? I mean that he is told, the moment he arrives, that his secret dream of greatness is a pipe-dream; that it will be a long time before he makes a significant, personal contribution - if ever. He is told this not with words. He is told this in a much more convincing way. He is shown, in everything that happens to him, that nobody could dream that he could make a significant, personal contribution.

Edwin H. Land

A contemporary man who has not participated intimately in actual work in science is, in my opinion, not a modern man. I believe that this experience in science should come early in the life of all of our pupils.

Edwin H. Land

Who can object to a monopoly when there are several thousands of them? Who can object to a monopoly when every few years the company enjoying the monopoly revises, alters, perhaps even discards its product, in order to supply a superior one to the public? 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

Now, partly that was work, and partly that was brains, but very largely it was having the guts, the guts to be immodest in the right way.

Edwin H. Land

I would urge that just as democracy initially meant the right of man to defend himself, to have a sword, and then meant the right to write, and then meant the right to read - so, now, democracy means the right to have the scientific experience.

Edwin H. Land

In my opinion, neither organisms nor organizations evolve slowly and surely into something better, but drift until some small change occurs which has immediate and overwhelming significance. The special role of the human being is not to wait for these favorable accidents but deliberately to introduce the small change that will have great significance.

Edwin H. Land

I believe quite simply that the small company of the future will be as much a research organization as it is a manufacturing company, and that this new company is the frontier for the next generation.

Edwin H. Land

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

Edwin H. Land

Politeness is the poison of collaboration.

Edwin H. Land

Our society is changing so rapidly that none of us can know what it is or where it is going.

Edwin H. Land

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