Quotes from land edwin iii

I say that our system of tests and grades, as it now exists, is one source of the low yield of great men from our universities. The marking system is a traumatic experience from which most students emerge with a deep determination never to get into a situation where they can be marked again. They just won't ever again take a chance.

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.

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

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.

Long before he puts the problem into words, the scientist knows how to confine his questions to ones that he thinks are answerable. He wouldn't be able to formulate them otherwise. His taste, discernment, wisdom, shrewdness and experience have established within him an inner knowledge of what is feasible.

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.

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.

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

Science is a method to keep yourself from kidding yourself.

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.