Musk Quotes & Sayings

They were building a Ferrari for every launch, when it was possible that a Honda Accord might do the trick. — Elon Musk

To get at the truth of your calling, you have to crack open that false self and see what lies within. — Justine 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

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

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

He let Tech's cock slide from his mouth, then eagerly began nuzzling and lapping at the crinkled skin covering his balls. The clean smell of soap mixed with Tech's own musk had Steele ready to plunge deep inside and claim this man. "Don't — A.E. Via

For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never. — Elon Musk

Musk loves costume parties as well, and turned up at one dressed like a knight and using a parasol to duel a midget wearing a Darth Vader costume. — Ashlee Vance

Without another word, we began to eat. I was hungry, but no appetite would excuse the way we set upon those dishes. We shoveled food into our mouths in a manner ill befitting our fine attire. Bears would have blushed to see us bent over our plates. The pheasant, still steaming from the oven, its dark flesh redolent with the mushroom musk of the forest floor, was gnawed quickly to the bone. It was a touch gamy - no milk-fed goose, this - but it was tender, and the piquant hominy balanced that wild taste as I had hoped it would. The eggs, laced pink at the edges and floating delicately in a carnal sauce, were gulped down in two bites. The yolks were cooked to that rare liminal degree, no longer liquid but not yet solid, like the formative moment of a sun-colored gem. — Eli Brown

I started SpaceX with the expectation of failure. — 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

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

In my early teens, I heard about Naked Lunch and its mutating typewriters and talking cockroaches. While I would hardly classify its dystopic vision as erotica now, at the time, Naked Lunch was my first foray into consuming smut. It was because of Burroughs that I knew about the particular musk that blooms when a rectum is penetrated, and that death-by-hanging produces spontaneous trouser tents. The first Burroughs I read was Naked Lunch, but I buried myself in a few of his stories, and thus the arc of my recollection is just as non-linear as his narrative. — Peter Dube

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

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

I walked into a white city. It was a honeycomb of ivory-white cells, streets like ribbons of old ermine. The stone and mortar were mixed with sunlight, with musk and white cotton. I passed by streets of peace lying entangled like cotton spools ... — Anais Nin

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

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine. — William Shakespeare

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

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

But a smell shivered him awake.
It was a scent as old as the world. It was a hundred aromas of a thousand places. It was the tang of pine needles. It was the musk of sex. It was the muscular rot of mushrooms. It was the spice of oak. Meaty and redolent of soil and bark and herb. It was bats and husks and burrows and moss. It was solid and alive - so alive! And it was close.
The vapors invaded Nicholas' nostrils and his hair rose to their roots. His eyes were as heavy as manhole covers, but he opened them. Through the dying calm inside him snaked a tremble of fear.
The trees themselves seemed tense, waiting. The moonlight was a hard shell, sharp and ready to ready be struck and to ring like steel.
A shadow moved.
It poured like oil from between the tall trees and flowed across dark sandy dirt, lengthening into the middle of the ring. Trees seem to bend toward it, spellbound. A long, long shadow ... — Stephen M. Irwin

What I'm trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone. — Elon Musk

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

Tesla is becoming a real car company. — Elon Musk

Nobody wants to buy a $60,000 electric Civic. But people will pay $90,000 for an electric sports car. — Elon Musk

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

We polled Tesla owners, do you want autopilot disabled or not. Not one person wanted it disabled. That's pretty telling. — Elon Musk

When people really understand it's do or die [and] if we work hard and pull through, it's going to be a great outcome; people will give it everything they've got. — Elon Musk

Any product that needs a manual to work is broken. — Elon Musk

Shakespeare's felicity is so often taught
it is easy to overlook how taut
the sinews in his neck must
have been when he grasped his pen, or the musk
that exuded from the fat of his chin
below a somewhat chthonic grin
life wrestled death on his desk when he composed. — B.J. Ward

I usually describe myself as an engineer; that's basically what I've been doing since I was a kid. — Elon Musk

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

Lirralei was a girl of storm
winds and thorns, the musk of the wild rose and the flight of the falcon. — Rosamund Hodge

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

Does the logic connect? What are the range of probably outcomes? You want to figure out what those probabilities are and ideally be the House. It's fine to gamble, as long as you're the House. Also, listen to critical feedback, particularly from friends. Generally they will be thinking it but they won't tell you — 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

It's not as though we can keep burning coal in our power plants. Coal is a finite resource, too. We must find alternatives, and it's a better idea to find alternatives sooner then wait until we run out of coal, and in the meantime, put God knows how many trillions of tons of CO2 that used to be buried underground into the atmosphere. — Elon Musk

Musk took to the Mars Society right away and joined its board of directors. He donated another $100,000 to fund a research station in the desert as well. Musk's — Ashlee Vance

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

The enemy of feminism isn't men. It's patriarchy, and patriarchy is not men. It is a system, and women can support the system of patriarchy just as men can support the fight for gender equality. — Justine Musk

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. — Elon Musk

If something's important enough, you should try. Even if you - the probable outcome is failure. — Elon Musk

Silicon Valley has evolved a critical mass of engineers and venture capitalists and all the support structure - the law firms, the real estate, all that - that are all actually geared toward being accepting of startups. — Elon Musk

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. — Elon Musk

we smelled the blotter of lavender a second time. I was surprised to find that it had changed. Most materials do, Fauvel explained. Some burst into the nose immediately and leave just as fast, ones like lemon, like orange, like ginger. Those, she said, are called top notes. Middle notes, like geranium and rose, linger but not for the long term. Base notes like sandalwood or musk stick around a while. — Molly Birnbaum

I love musk oil. There's something about musk that makes it memorable without being overpowering. — Iggy Azalea

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

Vegetable seed catalogs have replaced the penny candy store. The fireballs, the root-beer barrels, and the licorice whips aren't sold at the corner anymore. Now the sweets are sold by seed companies instead. There's "candystick" and "sweet slice" and "sugar rock" but these aren't types of candy, they are varieties of sweet corn, cucumber and musk melon. — Roger B. Swain

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

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

SpaceX is in this for the long haul and, come hell or high water, we are going to make this work." Musk — Ashlee Vance

The reality is gas prices should be much more expensive then they are because we're not incorporating the true damage to the environment and the hidden costs of mining oil and transporting it to the U.S. Whenever you have an unpriced externality, you have a bit of a market failure, to the degree that eternality remains unpriced. — Elon Musk

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

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

Choose one thing and become a master of it. Choose a second thing and become a master of that. When you become a master of two worlds (say, engineering and business), you can bring them together in a way that will a) introduce hot ideas to each other, so they can have idea sex and make idea babies that no one has seen before and b) create a competitive advantage because you can move between worlds, speak both languages, connect the tribes, mash the elements to spark fresh creative insight until you wake up with the epiphany that changes your life. — Justine Musk

Zip2, PayPal, Tesla, SolarCity - they are all expressions of Musk. SpaceX is Musk. — Ashlee Vance

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

The moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it:
The moon is within me, and so is the sun.
The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me; but my deaf ears cannot hear it.
So long as man clamors for the I and the Mine, his works are as naught:
When all love of the I and the Mine is dead, then the work of the Lord is done.
For work has no other aim than the getting of knowledge:
When that comes, then work is put away.
The flower blooms for the fruit: when the fruit comes, the flower withers.
The musk is in the deer, but is seeks it not within itself: it wanders in quest of grass. — Kabir

How could anybody confuse truth with beauty, I thought as I looked at him. Truth came with sunken eyes, bony or scarred, decayed. Its teeth were bad, its hair gray and unkempt. While beauty was empty as a gourd, vain as a parakeet. But it had power. It smelled of musk and oranges and made you close your eyes in a prayer. — Janet Fitch

Eat that fuckin' hole," Furi panted, lifting and rubbing his ass against Syn's face. Furi tasted better than the rich dessert they'd just consumed. Full of musk with a hint of his body wash. Syn knew he had to get that tight star to loosen up good so his lover wouldn't experience much discomfort, the same way Furi did for him. Syn didn't want to rush this, he had to calm down, they had all night. He slowed his energetic nipping to slow circles around Furi's — Anonymous

I don't think we do simple. We do complicated."
"We're older now. Smarter."
"No," she said. "I don't think so. I think we make each other stupid."
He was in her space now, backing her up. She could feel the heat of his body. Smell soap and musk, which called to the most primitive part of her brain: You want this.
"Fine," he said. "Let's be stupid. — Serena Bell

We all have our safe places, where none are invited. They are lonely rooms full of the musk of memory. Sanctuary rather than adventure. — Basith

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

Page holds Musk up as a model he wishes others would emulate - a figure that should be replicated during a time in which the businessmen and politicians have fixated on short-term, inconsequential goals. "I don't think we're doing a good job as a society deciding what things are really important to do," Page said. "I think like we're just not educating people in this kind of general way. You should have a pretty broad engineering and scientific background. You should have some leadership training and a bit of MBA training or knowledge of how to run things, organize stuff, and raise money. I don't think most people are doing that, and it's a big problem. Engineers are usually trained in a very fixed area. When you're able to think about all of these disciplines together, you kind of think differently and can dream of much crazier things and how they might work. I think that's really an important thing for the world. That's how we make progress. — Ashlee Vance

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. — Elon Musk

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

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

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

Musk kept Riley's attention, and the romance began in earnest. The couple had lunch the next day and then went to the White Cube, a modern art gallery, and then back to Musk's hotel room. Musk told Riley, a virgin, that he wanted to show her his rockets. "I was skeptical, but he did actually show me rocket videos," she said. — Ashlee Vance

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

Doubt is a precipice on the way to God. Blessed is he who is freed from its bonds. He who fares without any doubt, adhere to his footprints if you do not know the way. Cleave to the footprints of the deer and advance with care that you may reach the musk-gland. By means of such trekking, even if you walk on fire, you will reach the luminous peak. — Rumi

Upright, she's slapped with the aroma of musk and sweat. It's the good hunky, 'shirtless man building a dollhouse for his daughter' kind of perspiration, not the 'he just mowed the lawn' kind of stench. — Sandy Ward Bell

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

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

It took six years - about four and half more than Musk had once planned - and five hundred people to make this miracle of modern science and business happen. — Ashlee Vance

Lussurioso: "Welcome, be not far off, we must be better acquainted. Push, be bold with us, thy hand!"
Vindice: "With all my heart, i'faith. How dost, sweet musk-cat?
When shall we lie together?"
Lussurioso: (aside) "Wondrous knave!
Gather him into boldness? 'Sfoot, the slave's
Already as familiar as an ague,
And shakes me at his pleasure!
Friend, I can
Forget myself in private, but elsewhere,
I pray do you remember be."
Vindice: "Oh, very well, sir.
I conster myself saucy."
Lussurioso: "What hast been? What profession?"
Vindice: "A bone-setter."
Lussurioso: "A bone-setter!"
Vindice: "A bawd, my lord, one that sets bones together."
Lussurioso: (aside) "Notable bluntness! — Thomas Middleton

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

Elon is one of the few people that I feel is more accomplished than I am," said Craig Venter, the man who decoded the human genome and went on to create synthetic lifeforms. At some point he hopes to work with Musk on a type of DNA printer that could be sent to Mars. It would, in theory, allow humans to create medicines, food, and helpful microbes for early settlers of the planet. "I think biological teleportation is what is going to truly enable the colonization of space," he said. "Elon and I have been talking about how this might play out. — Ashlee Vance

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

I am essence of Rose Solitude
my cheeks are laced with cognac
my hips sealed with five satin nails
I carry dreams and romance of new fools and old
flames
between the musk of fat
and the side pocket of my mink tongue. — Jayne Cortez

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

So, there's quite a big keep-out zone, and when you factor the keep-out zone into account, the solar panels put on that area would typically generate more power than that nuclear power plant. — 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

She chose books because they never left her lonely the way that Kirk had left her lonely. BEcause company was often nothing of the kind, whereas a good book always was.
She chose books for the smell of fresh-pressed pages, for the yellow-brown musk of library mould, but always for the breathy kiss of paper rustling. She chose books because some of the held prose that made her weep, or poetry that winded her, and words that mae her heart skip beats.
She chose books because some came readey-made with characters that seemed like perfect versions of hrself, all of them little proofs that somehow, somewhere, it might just be possible for her to be better: to be popular, powerful, sexy and smart.
She chose books because they lied to her with more conviction than people ever had. — Dan Micklethwaite

No scent is more sensual or more memorable to me than musk. — Narciso Rodriguez

You can see Musk's embrace of the car as lifestyle in Tesla's abandonment of model years. Tesla does not designate cars as being 2014s or 2015s, and it also doesn't have "all the 2014s in stock must go, go, go and make room for the new cars" sales. It produces the best Model S it can at the time, and that's what the customer receives. This means that Tesla does not develop and hold on to a bunch of new features over the course of the year and then unleash them in a new model all at once. It adds features one by one to the manufacturing line when they're ready. Some customers may be frustrated to miss out on a feature here and there. Tesla, however, manages to deliver most of the upgrades as software updates that everyone gets, providing current Model S owners with pleasant surprises. — Ashlee Vance

Musk had actually started thinking bigger than the Mars Society. Rather than send a few mice into Earth's orbit, Musk wanted to send them to Mars. Some very rough calculations done at the time suggested that the journey would cost $15 million. "He asked if I thought that was crazy," Zachary said. "I asked, 'Do the mice come back? Because, if they don't, yeah, most people will think that's crazy. — Ashlee Vance

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

Musk's vision, and, of late, execution seem to combine the best of Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller. With — Ashlee Vance

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

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

If armed terrorists had tried to hijack any of the flights I've been on lately, we passengers would have swiftly beaten them to death with those hard rolls you get with your in-flight meal. Funny, isn't it? The airlines go to all that trouble to keep you from taking a gun on board, then they just hand you a dinner toll you could kill a musk ox with. — Dave Barry

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

She felt the snake between her breasts, felt him there, and loved him there, coiled, the deep tumescent S held rigid, ready to strike. She loved the way the snake looked sewn onto her V-neck letter sweater, his hard diamondback pattern shining in the sun. It was unseasonably hot, almost sixty degrees, for early November in Mystic, Georgia, and she could smell the light musk of her own sweat. She liked the sweat, liked the way it felt, slick as oil, in all the joints of her body, her bones, in the firm sliding muscles, tensed and locked now, ready to spring
to strike
when the band behind her fired up the school song: "Fight On Deadly Rattlers of Old Mystic High."
Harry Crews- A Feast of Snakes — Harry Crews

I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA. — Elon Musk

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