I've actually made a prediction that within 30 years a majority of new cars made in the United States will be electric. And I don't mean hybrid, I mean fully electric.

Physics is a good framework for thinking. ... Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.

Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

There have only been about a half dozen genuinely important events in the four-billion-year saga of life on Earth: single-celled life, multicelled life, differentiation into plants and animals, movement of animals from water to land, and the advent of mammals and consciousness.

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.

Fear is a hard thing to deal with. I feel it quite strongly. If I think something is important enough, I'll make myself do it in spite of fear. But it can really sap the will. I hate fear, I wish I had it less.

If you go back 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.