And don’t forget to check out these and .
1. “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”
2. “Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.”
3. “Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.”
4. “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.”
5. “Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.”
6. “It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”
7. “I’m reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States—for the century, at least.”
8. “Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.”
9. “I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”
10. “If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.”
11.”Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.”
12. “There’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.”
13. “I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.”
14. “I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.”
15. “I’ve actually not read any books on time management.”
16. “Disruptive technology where you really have a big technology discontinuity… tends to come from new companies.”
17. “I think whenever something is—whenever there’s something that affects the public good, then there does need to be some form of public oversight.”
18. “The key to making things affordable is design and technology improvements, as well as scale.”
19. “I wish we could be private with Tesla. It actually makes us less efficient to be a public company.”
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20. “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.”
21. “If something’s important enough, you should try. Even if the probable outcome is failure.”
22. “I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”
23. “Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.”
24. “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.”
25. “Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.”
26. “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.”
27. “People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.”
28. “I wouldn’t say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and frees my nervous system.”
29. “You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be… better.”
30. “You have to say, ‘Well, why did it succeed where others did not?'”
31. “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.”
32. “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.”
33. “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.”
34. “If something has to be designed and invented, and you have to figure out how to ensure that the value of the thing you create is greater than the cost of the inputs, then that is probably my core skill.”
35. “Don’t delude yourself into thinking something’s working when it’s not, or you’re gonna get fixated on a bad solution.”
36. “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.”
37. “Facebook is quite entrenched and has a network effect. It’s hard to break into a network once it’s formed.”
38. “If something is important enough, you should try and even if you, the probable outcome is a failure.”
39. “Life is too short for long-term grudges.”
40. “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.”
41. “If I’m not in love, if I’m not with a long-term companion, I cannot be happy.”
42. “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.”
43. . “We’re going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work.”
44. “The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.”
45. “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.”
46. “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?”
47. “Really pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends. Hardly anyone does that, and it’s incredibly helpful.”
48. “I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.”
49. “I would just question things… It would infuriate my parents… That I wouldn’t just believe them when they said something ’cause I’d ask them why. And then I’d consider whether that response made sense given everything else I knew.”
50. “I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.”
51. “There have only been about a half dozen genuinely important events in the four-billion-year saga of life on Earth: single-celled life, multi celled life, differentiation into plants and animals, movement of animals from water to land, and the advent of mammals and consciousness.”
52. “There’s nothing – I’ve bought everything I want. I don’t like yachts or anything; you know, I’m not a yacht person, and I’ve got pretty much the nicest plane I’d want to have.”
53. “I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people.”
54. “We are the first species capable of self-annihilation.”
55. “As much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs. MBA programs don’t teach people how to create companies.”
56. “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.”
57. “When I was a child, there’s one thing I said: ‘I never want to be alone.’ That’s what I would say. I don’t want to be alone.”
58. “I’ve been to Disneyland, like, 10 times. I’m getting really tired of Disneyland.”
59. “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.”
60. “Great companies are built on great products.”
61. “Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.”
62. “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.”
63. “Selling an electric sports car creates an opportunity to fundamentally change the way America drives.”
64. “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.”
65. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.”
66. “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.”
67. “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.”
68. “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.”
69. “I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself.”
70. “Some companies out there quote a start of production that is substantially in advance of when customers get their cars.”
71. “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.”
72. “Nobody wants to buy a $60,000 electric Civic. But people will pay $90,000 for an electric sports car.”
73. “I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.”
74. “I don’t believe in process. In fact, when I interview a potential employee and he or she says that ‘it’s all about the process,’ I see that as a bad sign. The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. 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.”
75. “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.”
76. “Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.”
77. “It’s very important to like the people you work with, otherwise life [and] your job is gonna be quite miserable.”
78. “We have a strict ‘no-assholes policy’ at SpaceX.”
79. “I think the best way to attract venture capital is to try and come up with a demonstration of whatever product or service it is and ideally take that as far as you can. Just see if you can sell that to real customers and start generating some momentum. The further along you can get with that, the more likely you are to get funding.”
80. “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.”
81. “It is true that SpaceX is partially a government contractor, but it would be unfair to say that SpaceX is entirely a government contractor.”
82. “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.”
83. “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.”
84. “I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.”
85. “I do think there should be some regulations on AI.”
86. “I think Tesla will most likely develop its own autopilot system for the car, as I think it should be camera-based, not Lidar-based. However, it is also possible that we do something jointly with Google.”
87. “For all the supporters of Tesla over the years, and it’s been several years now and there have been some very tough times, I’d just like to say thank you very much. I deeply appreciate the support, particularly through the darkest times.”
88. “Whap, reliable cars, people said, ‘Nah, en Henry Ford made chewhat’s wrong with a horse?’ That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.”
89. “The fuel cell is just a fundamentally inferior way of delivering electrical energy to an electric motor than batteries.”
90. “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.”
91. “My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineered things around me.”
92. “I like the word ‘autopilot’ more than I like the word ‘self-driving.’ ‘Self-driving’ sounds like it’s going to do something you don’t want it to do. ‘Autopilot’ is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.”
93. “There are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions.”
94. “In the early days of aviation, there was a great deal of experimentation and a high death rate.”
95. “What makes innovative thinking happen? I think it’s really a mindset. You have to decide.”
96. “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.”
97. “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.”
