Famous Quotes by Edwin Land

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

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

Do not do anything that anyone else can do readily.

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...

My motto is very personal and may not fit anyone else or any other company. It is: Don’t do anything that someone else can do. Don’t undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.

Colour is always a consequence, never a cause.

We took on things which people might think would take a year or two. They weren't particularly hard. What was hard was believing they weren't hard.

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

The process must be concealed from - non-existent for - the photographer, who by definition need think of the art in the taking and not in the making photographs.

Industry is best at the intersection of science and art.

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!

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.

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

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.

I believe each incoming freshman 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.

Look, if the picture you get instantly is as beautiful as the picture you get by waiting seven days, then it is absolute madness to say that there is virtue in waiting.

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

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

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

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.

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

We have to keep in practice like musicians. Besides, there are still potentialities to be realized in color film.