Funded by the government just means funded by the people. Government, by the way, has no money. It only takes money from the people. Sometimes people forget that that's really what occurs.

I started SpaceX with the expectation of failure.

Nobody wants to buy a $60,000 electric Civic. But people will pay $90,000 for an electric sports car.

Great companies are built on great products.

I realized that a methane-oxygen rocket engine could achieve a specific impulse greater than 380.

People often mistake technology for a static picture. It's less like a picture and more like a movie. It's the velocity of technology innovation that matters. It's the acceleration.

We're running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.