Elon Musk quotes: fascinating philosophies from the billionaire.
“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”
“Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.”
“My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.”
“My family fears that the Russians will assassinate me.”
“I’m not an alien, but I used to be one.”
“Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.”
“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.”
“I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in just using other people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest if I’m not prepared to do so myself.”
“Optimism, pessimism, f*ck that; we’re going to make it happen. As God as my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work.”
“If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.”
“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.”
“Work like hell. I mean, you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. This improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour workweeks and you’re putting in 100 hour workweeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.”
“What makes innovative thinking happen? I think it’s really a mindset. You have to decide.”
“Boring bonehead questions are not cool. These questions are so dry. They’re killing me.”
“We have essentially no patents in SpaceX. Our primary long term competition is in China. If we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese would just use them as a recipe book.”
“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.”
“There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.”
“[Regarding his many Twitter beefs] Twitter is a war zone. If somebody’s going to jump in the war zone, it’s like, okay, you’re in the arena. Let’s go.”
“If there was a way that I could not eat, so I could work more, I would not eat. I wish there was a way to get nutrients without sitting down for a meal.”
“Physics is a good framework for thinking. Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.”
“There’s a fundamental difference, if you look into the future, between a humanity that is a space-faring civilization, that’s out there exploring the stars… compared with one where we are forever confined to earth until some eventual extinction event.”
“Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.”
“The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.”
“[On blazin’ up while being interviewed on Joe Rogan’s podcast] I’m getting text messages from friends saying, ‘What the hell are you doing smoking weed?'”
“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.”
“It’s okay to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”
“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.”
“You shouldn’t do things different just because they’re different. They need to be better.”
“Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.”
“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.”
“I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.”
“You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that’s wrong with it and fix it. Seek negative feedback, particularly from friends.”
“I think it is possible for ordinary people to be extraordinary.”
“Going from PayPal, I thought: ‘Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?’ Not from the perspective, ‘What’s the best way to make money?'”
“There’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.”
“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.”
“My mentality is that of a samurai. I would rather commit seppuku than fail.”
“If the odds are probably in your favor, you should make as many decisions as possible within the bounds of what is executable.”
“I always have optimism, but I’m realistic. It was not with the expectation of great success that I started Tesla or SpaceX. It’s just that I thought they were important enough to do anyway.”
“In the distant future, people may outlaw driving cars because it’s too dangerous. You can’t have a person driving a two-ton death machine.”
Related: Jim Carrey Quotes.
