Home / Quotes / Quote by Edwin Land

Quote by Edwin Land

“[A Polaroid camera] places before you a thing that is more of the thing than the thing was.”

Quote by Edwin Land

Author

Edwin Land, born on May 7, 1909, was an American scientist renowned for his contributions to photography. He is best known for inventing the Polaroid instant film, which revolutionized the photography industry. Land's achievements extended beyond photography, including innovations in optics, physics, and engineering. more

You May Also Like

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

Messages Being True Dramatic Theatrical Persuasive

Author: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.”

Years Firsts Kind Film Four Essentials Photography Cameras Instant Thirty Fifty Digital Four Years Layers Crystals Liquid Synthetic

Author:Edwin Land

“I don't mind conducting the orchestra if I can play the violin.”

Ifs Mind I Can Play Orchestra Violin Conducting

Author:Edwin 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.”

World Way Believe Persons Different Problem Young I Believe Wonderful Special Fingerprints Unsolved Problems

Author:Edwin Land

“Even in comedies, you've got to feel safe for things to just happen in a way that is natural and free, and recognizable as human.”

Way Feels Humans Happens Natural Comedy Safe

Author:Richard Gere

“Photography is unlike any other art form. In the other arts there is always a continuous interplay between the artist and his art. He has the painting or sculpture before him. What we have tried to do is to provide a medium for "artistic expression" to anyone with only a reasonable amount of time. By giving him a camera system with which he need only control his selection of focus, composition and lighting, we free him to select the moment and to criticize immediately what he has done. We enable him to see what else he wants to do on the basis of what he has just learned.”

“Don't do anything that someone else can do.”

Author:Edwin Land

“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!”

Trying Firsts Use Shows Problem Eye Easy Research Accidents Significant Right Thing Bulls Unimportant Fallacy Empiricism

Author:Edwin Land

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

Might Intellectual Persuading

Author:Edwin 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.”

Kind Past Numbers Roles Successful Accurate Hypothesis Systematic Orderly

Book:Generation of Greatness: The Idea of a University in an Age of Science

Source: Generation of Greatness: The Idea of a University in an Age of Science