Elon Musk Quotes & Sayings

I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths ... and then reason up from there. — Elon Musk

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

America is the spirit of human exploration distilled. — Elon Musk

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

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

I'm a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything. — 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

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

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

Entrepreneurship is like eating glass and walking on hot coals at the same time — Elon Musk

I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It's the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company. — 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

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

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. — Elon Musk

Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product. — Elon Musk

In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution. — Elon Musk

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

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

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

The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S. — Elon Musk

Automotive franchise laws were put in place decades ago to prevent a manufacturer from unfairly opening stores in direct competition with an existing franchise dealer that had already invested time, money and effort to open and promote their business. — Elon Musk

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

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 — Elon Musk

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

The fuel cell is just a fundamentally inferior way of delivering electrical energy to an electric motor than batteries. — Elon Musk

It's a fixer-upper of a planet but we could make it work. — 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 we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it's probably that. So we need to be very careful ... With artificial intelligence we're summoning the demon. — Elon Musk

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

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

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

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

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. — Elon Musk

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

I do think there is a lot of potential if you have a compelling product and people are willing to pay a premium for that. I think that is what Apple has shown. You can buy a much cheaper cell phone or laptop, but Apple's product is so much better than the alternative, and people are willing to pay that premium. — Elon Musk

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

You could power the entire United States with about 150 to 200 square kilometers of solar panels, the entire United States. Take a corner of Utah ... there's not much going on there, I've been there. There's not even radio stations. — 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 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

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'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. — Elon Musk

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

It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive. — Elon Musk

You can just reload, propel it and fly again. This is extremely important for revolutionizing access to space because as long as we continue to throw away rockets and space crafts, we will never truly have access to space. — 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

An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us. — Elon Musk

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

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

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

As a child I would just question things ... — 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

Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster. — Elon Musk

Engineering is the closest thing to magic that exists in the world. — Elon Musk

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

No I don't ever give up. I would have to be dead or completely incapacitated — 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

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

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

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

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

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. — Elon Musk

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

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

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

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

It's OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket. — Elon Musk

You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on ... So it's a fixer-upper of a planet. — Elon Musk

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

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

When you struggle with a problem, that's when you understand it. — Elon Musk

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

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. — Elon Musk

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Elon Musk

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

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. — Elon Musk

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

The idea of lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. It sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I'd be super-duper bored. I like high intensity. — Elon Musk

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

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

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

The factory is the machine that builds the machine. — 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

Let's think beyond the normal stuff and have an environment where that sort of thinking is encouraged and rewarded and where it's okay to fail as well. Because when you try new things, you try this idea, that idea ... well a large number of them are not gonna work, and that has to be okay. If every time somebody comes up with an idea it has to be successful, you're not gonna get people coming up with ideas. — Elon Musk

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

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

I think you should always be seeking negative feedback. — 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

I don't spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems. — Elon Musk

And we need things in life that are exciting and inspiring. It can't just be about solving some awful problem. There have to be reasons to get up in the morning. — Elon Musk

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

There's a real opportunity to have a vertical takeoff and landing electric supersonic jet. — 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