104 Quotes by Edwin Land

Fifty years after we undertook to make the first synthetic polarizers we find them the essential layer in digital liquid-crystal. And thirty four years after we undertook to make the first instant camera and film, our kind of photography has become ubiquitous.

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

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.

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!

I believe each incoming freshman [in college] 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.

We took nothing from anybody. We gave a great deal to the world. The only thing keeping us alive is our brilliance. The only thing that keeps our brilliance alive is our patents.

Aladdin in his most intoxicated moments would never have dreamed of asking his [djinn] for [a polaroid] ... It's utterly new in concept and appearance, utilizing an utterly revolutionary flash system, an utterly revolutionary viewing system, utterly revolutionary electronics, and utterly revolutionary film structure.

[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.

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?