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

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.

I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.

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.

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.

With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it's like, yeah, he's sure he can control the demon. Didn't work out.

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.