I'm a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.

I think long term you can see Tesla establishing factories in Europe, in other parts of the U.S. and in Asia.

Weighing too much on someone's talent and not someone's personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It's the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.

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.

I started SpaceX with the expectation of failure.

In order for us to have a future that's exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we're a space-bearing civilization.