Elon Musk University Quote Quotes

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

I started SpaceX with the expectation of failure. ~ Elon Musk

Don't be afraid of new arenas. ~ Elon Musk

As a child I would just question things ... ~ Elon Musk

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

Constantly think about how you could be doing things better. ~ Elon Musk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You should take the approach that you're wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong. ~ Elon Musk

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

My mentality is that of a samurai. I would rather commit seppuku than fail. ~ Elon Musk

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

You could warm Mars up, over time, with greenhouse gases. ~ Elon Musk

I think it matters whether someone has a good heart. ~ Elon Musk

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor. ~ Elon Musk

Rockets are cool. There's no getting around that. ~ Elon Musk

I think you should always be seeking negative feedback. ~ Elon Musk

My family fears that the Russians will assassinate me. ~ Elon Musk

I think it would be great to be born on Earth and die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact. ~ Elon Musk

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

My opinion is it's a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars. ~ Elon Musk

I don't create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done. ~ Elon Musk

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

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

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

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

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

You should be innovating so fast that you're invalidating your prior patents ~ Elon Musk

If you think back to the beginning of cell phones, laptops or really any new technology, it's always expensive. ~ Elon Musk

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

You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that's wrong with it and fix it. ~ Elon Musk

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

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

I take the position that I'm always to some degree wrong, and the aspiration is to be less wrong. ~ Elon Musk

When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world. ~ Elon Musk

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

Really pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends. ... Hardly anyone does that, and it's incredibly helpful. ~ Elon Musk

What I'm trying to do is to maximise the probability of the future being better. ~ Elon Musk

Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world. ~ Elon Musk

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

I'm nauseatingly pro-American. I would have come here from any country. The U.S. is where great things are possible. ~ Elon Musk

Great companies are built on great products. ~ Elon Musk

Actively seek out and listen carefully to negative feedback. ~ Elon Musk

Many things are improbable, only a few are impossible. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

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

Most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying. ~ Elon Musk

I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I'm really good at email. ~ Elon Musk

The primary means of energy generation is going to solar. It will at least be a plurality, and probably be a slight majority in the long term. ~ Elon Musk

Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of what you're doing is as valuable as gold ~ Elon Musk

Tesla is becoming a real car company. ~ Elon Musk

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

In order for us to have a future that's exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we're a space-bearing civilization. ~ Elon Musk

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

It was obvious to me that we could never colonize Mars without reusability, any more than America would have been colonized if they had to burn the ships after every trip. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens. ~ Elon Musk

A Prius is not a true hybrid, really. The current Prius is, like, 2 percent electric. It's a gasoline car with slightly better mileage. ~ Elon Musk

The extension of life beyond Earth is the most important thing we can do as a species. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

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

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

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

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. ~ Elon Musk

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

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

You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

I realized that a methane-oxygen rocket engine could achieve a specific impulse greater than 380. ~ Elon Musk

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

Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That's pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

Stationary storage will be as big as the car business long term. The growth rate will probably be several times what it is for the car business. ~ Elon Musk

If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilisations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilisations. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better. ~ Elon Musk

I'm interested in things that change the world or that affect the future and wondrous, new technology where you see it, and you're like, 'Wow, how did that even happen? How is that possible?' ~ Elon Musk

I'm glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That's cool. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk

We have a strict 'no a-hole policy' at SpaceX. And we fire people they are. I mean, we give them a little bit of warning. But if they continue to be an a-hole, then they're fired. ~ Elon Musk

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. ~ Elon Musk