Elon Musk Quotes

I'm glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That's cool.

Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.

The reality is gas prices should be much more expensive then they are because we're not incorporating the true damage to the environment and the hidden costs of mining oil and transporting it to the U.S. Whenever you have an unpriced externality, you have a bit of a market failure, to the degree that eternality remains unpriced.

You can just reload, propel it and fly again. This is extremely important for revolutionizing access to space because as long as we continue to throw away rockets and space crafts, we will never truly have access to space.

I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.

I've actually not read any books on time management.

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.

Many things are improbable, only a few are impossible.

Silicon Valley has evolved a critical mass of engineers and venture capitalists and all the support structure - the law firms, the real estate, all that - that are all actually geared toward being accepting of startups.

An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us.

The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It'll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn't been reusable.

There's a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.

If you think back to the beginning of cell phones, laptops or really any new technology, it's always expensive.

I'm extremely confident that solar will be at least a plurality of power, and most likely a majority... in less than 20 years.

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

Great companies are built on great products.

My motivation for all my companies has been to be involved in something that I thought would have a significant impact on the world.

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

The only reason I was able to accomplish things is the great people willing to work with me. A company is a group of people organized to create a product or service, and that product or service is only as good as the people in the company - and how excited they are about creating it. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. Without them, I would have accomplished very little. I just happen to be the face of the companies.

The thing that's worth doing is trying to improve our understanding of the world and gain a better appreciation of the universe and not to worry too much about there being no meaning. And, you know, try and enjoy yourself. Because, actually, life's pretty good. It really is.

If something's important enough, you should try. Even if you - the probable outcome is failure.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I don't spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.

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

Selling an electric sports car creates an opportunity to fundamentally change the way America drives.

If you had to buy a new plane every time you flew somewhere, it would be incredibly expensive.

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.

I started SpaceX with the expectation of failure.

Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.

That's my lesson for taking a vacation: vacation will kill you.

Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.

Government isn't that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you've got to have commercial companies do it.

Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.

Patience is a virtue, and I'm learning patience. It's a tough lesson.

People will buy the car just because it's a great car. We want them to think it's excellent value for money and then, oh yeah, it happens to be electric.

It is despairing to consider that the cost and reliability of access to space have barely changed since the Apollo era over three decades ago. Yet in virtually every other field of technology, we have made great strides in reducing cost and increasing capability.

Does the logic connect? What are the range of probably outcomes? You want to figure out what those probabilities are and ideally be the House. It's fine to gamble, as long as you're the House. Also, listen to critical feedback, particularly from friends. Generally they will be thinking it but they won't tell you.

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 fries my nervous system.

It's really incumbent upon us as life's agents to extend life to another planet. I think that being a multi-planet species will significantly increase the richness and scope of the human experience.

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.

As a child I would just question things.

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.

I think there are too many smart people pursuing internet stuff, finance, and law. That is part of the reason why we haven't seen as much innovation.

It was obvious to me that we could never colonize Mars without reusability, any more than America would have been colonized if they had to burn the ships after every trip.

In the case of Apple, they did originally do production internally, but then along came unbelievably good outsourced manufacturing from companies like Foxconn. We don't have that in the rocket business. There's no Foxconn in the rocket business.