Elon Musk Quotes

You have to be pretty driven to make it happen. Otherwise, you will just make yourself miserable.

I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.

I read books and talked to people. I mean that's kind of how one learns anything. There's lots of great books out there & lots of smart people.

You get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of problems you solve

People will buy the car just because it's a great car. We want them to think it's excellent value for money and then, oh yeah, it happens to be electric.

I want to make rockets 100 times, if not 1,000 times better. The ultimate objective is to make humanity a multiplanet species. Thirty years from now, there'll be a base on the moon and on Mars, and people will be going back and forth on SpaceX rockets.

My proceeds from the PayPal acquisition were $180 million. I put $100 million in SpaceX, $70m in Tesla, and $10m in Solar City. I had to borrow money for rent.

The path to the CEO's office should not be through the CFO's office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.

When I was a little kid, I was really scared of the dark. But then I came to understand, dark just means the absence of photons in the visible wavelength--400 to 700 nanometers. Then I thought, well, it's really silly to be afraid of a lack of photons. Then I wasn't afraid of the dark anymore after that.

There are some important differences between me and Tony Stark, like I have five kids, so I spend more time going to Disneyland than parties.

Focus on something that has high value to someone else, be really rigorous in making that assessment, because natural human tendency is wishful thinking, so the challenge to entrepreneurs is telling what's the difference between really believing in your ideals and sticking to them as opposed to pursuing some unrealistic dream that doesn't actually have merit, be very rigorous in your self analysis, certainly being extremely tenacious, and just work like hell. Put in 80-100 hours every week. All these things improves the odds of success

The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It'll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn't been reusable.

Talent is extremely important. It's like a sports team, the team that has the best individual player will often win, but then there's a multiplier from how those players work together and the strategy they employ.

I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy.

I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I've got kids and responsibilities, so I can't be my own test pilot. That wouldn't be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as it's a sensible thing to do.

It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will.

Tesla is becoming a real car company.

It's just mind-blowingly awesome. I apologize, and I wish I was more articulate, but it's hard to be articulate when your mind's blown-but in a very good way.

I was born in Africa. I came to California because it's really where new technologies can be brought to fruition, and I don't see a viable competitor.

From an evolutionary standpoint, human consciousness has not been around very long. A little light just went on after four and a half billion years. How often does that happen? Maybe it is quite rare.

The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.

It's a fixer-upper of a planet but we could make it work.

It is theoretically possible to warp spacetime itself, so you're not actually moving faster than the speed of light, but it's actually space that's moving.

When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.

Don't be afraid of new arenas.

My family fears that the Russians will assassinate me.

I've actually not read any books on time management.

To make an embarrassing admission, I like video games. That's what got me into software engineering when I was a kid. I wanted to make money so I could buy a better computer to play better video games - nothing like saving the world.

In the early days of aviation, there was a great deal of experimentation and a high death rate.

I'd like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that's not just e-mail with a view.

With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.

I've always wanted to be part of something that would radically change the world ... People forget the power of inspiration. All of humanity went to the moon with the Apollo missions. The issue was cost. There was no chance to build a base and create frequent flights. That's the problem I would like to solve.

I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems ... It's got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.

The rumours of the demise of the U.S. manufacturing industry are greatly exaggerated.

Many things are improbable, only a few are impossible.

I think you should always be seeking negative feedback.

The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it's the right thing to do. It's economics 101, elementary stuff.

Selling an electric sports car creates an opportunity to fundamentally change the way America drives.

As a child I would just question things ...

Funded by the government just means funded by the people. Government, by the way, has no money. It only takes money from the people. Sometimes people forget that that's really what occurs.

The tough thing is figuring out what questions to ask, but [ ... ] once you do that, the rest is really easy.

Yeah, well I think anyone who likes fast cars will love the Tesla. And it has fantastic handling by the way. I mean this car will crush a Porsche on the track, just crush it. So if you like fast cars, you'll love this car. And then oh, by the way, it happens to be electric and it's twice the efficiency of a Prius.

Even if producing CO2 was good for the environment, given that we're going to run out of hydrocarbons, we need to find some sustainable means of operating.

If you had to buy a new plane every time you flew somewhere, it would be incredibly expensive.

The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication.

Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket - half a million dollars. It can be done.

Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

Tesla is here to stay and keep fighting for the electric car revolution.

If we're going to have any chance of sending stuff to other star systems, we need to be laser-focused on becoming a multi-planet civilisation.

My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars - this is very important - so you don't have to carry the return fuel when you go there.

The U.S. automotive industry has been selling cars the same way for over 100 years, and there are many laws in place to govern exactly how that is to be accomplished.

You want to have a future where you're expecting things to be better, not one where you're expecting things to be worse.

I'm reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States - for the century, at least.

Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.

I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

Mars is the only place in the solar system where it's possible for life to become multi-planetarian.

I think there are too many smart people pursuing internet stuff, finance, and law. That is part of the reason why we haven't seen as much innovation.

Actively seek out and listen carefully to negative feedback.

If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea.

A battery by definition is a collection of cells. So the cell is a little can of chemicals. And the challenge is taking a very high-energy cell, and a large number of them, and combining them safely into a large battery.

If you want to grow a giant redwood, you need to make sure the seeds are ok, nurture the sapling, and work out what might potentially stop it from growing all the way along. Anything that breaks it at any point stops that growth.

I like the word 'autopilot' more than I like the word 'self-driving.' 'Self-driving' sounds like it's going to do something you don't want it to do. 'Autopilot' is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.

SpaceX is only 12 years old now. Between now and 2040, the company's lifespan will have tripled. If we have linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people.

Every mode of transport that we use - whether it's planes, trains, automobiles, bikes, horses - is reusable, but not rockets. So we must solve this problem in order to become a space-faring civilization.

I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people.

I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved.

We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes,

Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.

Here in the West, people often don't like listening to their leaders, even if they are right.

We're running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere ... can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.

I really like computer games, but then if I made really great computer games, how much effect would that have on the world.

I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.

The biggest mistake, in general, I've made, is to put too much of a weighting on someone's talent and not enough on their personality. And I've made that mistake several times. I think it actually matters whether somebody has a good heart, it really does. I've made the mistake of thinking that it's sometimes just about the brain.

We could definitely make a flying car - but that's not the hard part. The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that's super safe and quiet? Because if it's a howler, you're going to make people very unhappy.

I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.

The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn't even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we'd never have had the light bulb.

When we got Tesla going at the very beginning, if you asked me what I thought the odds of success were, I would have said less than 50%. I would have said that failure is the most likely outcome.

I don't think it's a good idea to plan to sell a company.

The goal of Tesla is to accelerate sustainable energy, so we're going to take a step back and think about what's most likely to achieve that goal.

A utility can handle up to 20% of production from solar and that helps the grid because it produces electricity when needed. Solar power peaks in the middle of the day and that's also when air conditioning is running and businesses are operating, so power production matches usage.

Great companies are built on great products.

Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.

Some companies out there quote a start of production that is substantially in advance of when customers get their cars.

You want to do things you're passionate about but also are useful to other people.

That's my lesson for taking a vacation: vacation will kill you.

Life is too short for long-term grudges.

I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.

Physics is a good framework for thinking ... Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.

If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.

Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.

Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.

I've actually made a prediction that within 30 years a majority of new cars made in the United States will be electric. And I don't mean hybrid, I mean fully electric.

As you heat the planet up, it's just like boiling a pot.

If anyone thinks they'd rather be in a different part of history, they're probably not a very good student of history. Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You'd probably have no teeth by now. It would be particularly awful if you were a woman.

It's really incumbent upon us as life's agents to extend life to another planet. I think that being a multi-planet species will significantly increase the richness and scope of the human experience.

I started SpaceX with the expectation of failure.

I mean, I think that if people are concerned about volatility, they should definitely not buy our stock. I'm not here [on an earnings call] to convince you to buy [Tesla] stock. Do not buy it if volatility is scary. There you go.

For me it was never about money, but solving problems for the future of humanity.

There are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions.

One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree - make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.