Elon Musk Quotes

#1. I'm personally a moderate and a registered independent, so I'm not strongly Democratic or strongly Republican.

Elon Musk

#2. Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.

Elon Musk

#3. I realized that a methane-oxygen rocket engine could achieve a specific impulse greater than 380.

Elon Musk

#4. If something's important enough, you should try. Even if you - the probable outcome is failure.

Elon Musk

#5. 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.

Elon Musk

#6. I could go and buy one of the islands in the
Bahamas and turn it into my personal fiefdom, but I am much more interested in trying to build and
create a new company.

Elon Musk

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

Elon Musk

#8. 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

#9. I hate writing about personal stuff. I don't have a Facebook page. I don't use my Twitter account. I am familiar with both, but I don't use them.

Elon Musk

#10. In terms of the Internet, it's like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a [?], like a collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system. It's a hugely impactful thing.

Elon Musk

#11. Winning 'Motor Trend' Car of the year is probably the closest thing to winning the Oscar or Emmy of the car industry.

Elon Musk

#12. 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.

Elon Musk

#13. 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

#14. 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.

Elon Musk

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

Elon Musk

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

Elon Musk

#17. 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.

Elon Musk

#18. I always see what's ... wrong. Would you want that? When I see a car or a rocket or spacecraft, I only see what's wrong. I never see what's right. It's not a recipe for happiness.

Elon Musk

#19. SpaceX has the potential of saving the U.S. government $1 billion a year. We are opposed to creating an entrenched monopoly with no realistic means for anyone to compete.

Elon Musk

#20. People should pursue what they're passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.

Elon Musk

#21. My family fears that the Russians will assassinate me.

Elon Musk

#22. My opinion is it's a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars.

Elon Musk

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.

Elon Musk

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

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

Elon Musk

#29. Most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying.

Elon Musk

#30. 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

#31. I'm extremely confident that solar will be at least a plurality of power, and most likely a majority ... in less than 20 years.

Elon Musk

#32. I'm increasingly inclined to think there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level just to make sure that we don't do something very foolish.

Elon Musk

#33. 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

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

Elon Musk

#35. The extension of life beyond Earth is the most important thing we can do as a species.

Elon Musk

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

Elon Musk

#37. I take the position that I'm always to some degree wrong, and the aspiration is to be less wrong.

Elon Musk

#38. Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of what you're doing is as valuable as gold

Elon Musk

#39. You should take the approach that you're wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.

Elon Musk

#40. Well, my motivation behind Tesla is really to do as much good as possible for the environment and the electric-vehicle revolution. I think there is still a lot of work to do and if we were to sell to a big company, I'm not sure it would progress at the same pace.

Elon Musk

#41. The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You're encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren't that smart, who aren't that creative.

Elon Musk

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

Elon Musk

#43. In the case of Apple, they did originally do production internally, but then along came unbelievably good outsourced manufacturing from companies like Foxconn. We don't have that in the rocket business. There's no Foxconn in the rocket business.

Elon Musk

#44. 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.

Elon Musk

#45. If we could do high-speed rail in California just half a notch above what they've done on the Shanghai line in China, and if we had a straight path from L.A. to San Francisco, as well as the milk run, at least that would be progress.

Elon Musk

#46. There have only been about a half dozen genuinely important events in the four-billion-year saga of life on Earth: single-celled life, multicelled life, differentiation into plants and animals, movement of animals from water to land, and the advent of mammals and consciousness.

Elon Musk

#47. There's a silly notion that failure's not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

Elon Musk

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

Elon Musk

#49. What most people know but don't realize they know is that the world is almost entirely solar-powered already. If the sun wasn't there, we'd be a frozen ice ball at three degrees Kelvin, and the sun powers the entire system of precipitation. The whole ecosystem is solar-powered.

Elon Musk

#50. It is definitely true that the fundamental enabling technology for electric cars is lithium-ion as a cell chemistry technology. In the absence of that, I don't think it's possible to make an electric car that is competitive with a gasoline car.

Elon Musk

#51. 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.

Elon Musk

#52. 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

#53. You could warm Mars up, over time, with greenhouse gases.

Elon Musk

#54. If you're co-founder or CEO, you have to do all kinds of tasks you might not want to do ... If you don't do your chores, the company won't succeed ... No task is too menial.

Elon Musk

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

Elon Musk

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

Elon Musk

#57. Facebook is quite entrenched and has a network effect. It's hard to break into a network once it's formed.

Elon Musk

#58. If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it's not.

Elon Musk

#59. For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never.

Elon Musk

#60. There's a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.

Elon Musk

#61. Even if there's a zombie apocalypse, you'll still be able to travel using the Tesla Supercharging system.

Elon Musk

#62. 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

#63. 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.

Elon Musk

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

Elon Musk

#65. I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I'm really good at email.

Elon Musk

#66. Entrepreneurship is like eating glass and walking on hot coals at the same time

Elon Musk

#67. I just want to retire before I go senile because if I don't retire before I go senile, then I'll do more damage than good at that point.

Elon Musk

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

Elon Musk

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

Elon Musk

#70. Actively seek out and listen carefully to negative feedback.

Elon Musk

#71. I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad.

Elon Musk

#72. 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.

Elon Musk

#73. People often mistake technology for a static picture. It's less like a picture and more like a movie. It's the velocity of technology innovation that matters. It's the acceleration.

Elon Musk

#74. Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.

Elon Musk

#75. Patience is a virtue, and I'm learning patience. It's a tough lesson.

Elon Musk

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

Elon Musk

#77. The overarching goal of Tesla is to help reduce carbon emissions and that means low cost and high volume. We will also serve as an example to the auto industry, proving that the technology really works and customers want to buy electric vehicles.

Elon Musk

#78. When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world.

Elon Musk

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

Elon Musk

#80. The thing that's worth doing is trying to improve our understanding of the world and gain a better appreciation of the universe and not to worry too much about there being no meaning. And, you know, try and enjoy yourself. Because, actually, life's pretty good. It really is.

Elon Musk

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

Elon Musk

#82. Engineering is the closest thing to magic that exists in the world.

Elon Musk

#83. 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

#84. The factory is the machine that builds the machine.

Elon Musk

#85. A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. I just happen to be the face of the companies.

Elon Musk

#86. I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.

Elon Musk

#87. I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.

Elon Musk

#88. It's obviously tricky to convert cellulose to a useful biofuel. I think actually the most efficient way to use cellulose is to burn it in a co-generation power plant. That will yield the most energy and that is something you can do today.

Elon Musk

#89. It is despairing to consider that the cost and reliability of access to space have barely changed since the Apollo era over three decades ago. Yet in virtually every other field of technology, we have made great strides in reducing cost and increasing capability,

Elon Musk

#90. People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.

Elon Musk

#91. If you look at space companies, they've failed either because they've had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.

Elon Musk

#92. If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic - being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

Elon Musk

#93. I started SpaceX with the expectation of failure.

Elon Musk

#94. You should be innovating so fast that you're invalidating your prior patents

Elon Musk

#95. 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

#96. We have this handy fusion reactor in the sky called the sun, you don't have to do anything, it just works. It shows up every day.

Elon Musk

#97. Don't be afraid of new arenas.

Elon Musk

#98. America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.

Elon Musk

#99. With DNA, you have to be able to tell which genes are turned on or off. Current DNA sequencing cannot do that. The next generation of DNA sequencing needs to be able to do this. If somebody invents this, then we can start to very precisely identify cures for diseases.

Elon Musk

#100. Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.

Elon Musk