Elon Musk

“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 that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”

“The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad.”

“The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions: Either it's going to become multiplanetary, or it's going to remain confined to one planet and eventually there's going to be an extinction event.”

“When I was a child, there's one thing I said: 'I never want to be alone.' That's what I would say. I don't want to be alone.”

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

“If I'm not in love, if I'm not with a long-term companion, I cannot be happy.”

“If you look at space companies, they've failed either because they've had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.”

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”

“It's OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”

“I'd rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.”

“With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. You know all those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, and he's like, yeah, he's sure he can control the demon? Doesn't work out.”

“SpaceX is only 12 years old now. Between now and 2040, the company's lifespan will have tripled. If we have linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people.”

“If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it's not.”

“If you don't have sustainable energy, you have unsustainable energy. The fundamental value of a company like Tesla is the degree to which it accelerates the advent of sustainable energy faster than it would otherwise occur.”

“If I'm not in love, if I'm not with a long-term companion, I cannot be happy.”

“People should pursue what they're passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.”

“If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.”

“I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.”

“Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It's really counterintuitive.”

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”

“If you're trying to create a company, it's like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.”

“It is definitely true that the fundamental enabling technology for electric cars is lithium-ion as a cell chemistry technology. In the absence of that, I don't think it's possible to make an electric car that is competitive with a gasoline car.”

“The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions: Either it's going to become multiplanetary, or it's going to remain confined to one planet and eventually there's going to be an extinction event.”

“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.”

“We can't have, like, willy-nilly proliferation of fake news. That's crazy. You can't have more types of fake news than real news. That's allowing public deception to go unchecked. That's crazy.”

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

“If you go 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.”

“Life is too short for long-term grudges.”

“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 that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”

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

“Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.”

“I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.”

“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.”

“Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.”

“Yeah, well I think anyone who likes fast cars will love the Tesla. And it has fantastic handling by the way. I mean this car will crush a Porsche on the track, just crush it. So if you like fast cars, you'll love this car. And then oh, by the way, it happens to be electric and it's twice the efficiency of a Prius.”

“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.”

“Tesla is here to stay and keep fighting for the electric car revolution.”

“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.”

“I will never be happy without having someone. Going to sleep alone kills me.”

“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 do think there should be some regulations on AI.”

“I really do encourage other manufacturers to bring electric cars to market. It's a good thing, and they need to bring it to market and keep iterating and improving and make better and better electric cars, and that's what going to result in humanity achieving a sustainable transport future. I wish it was growing faster than it is.”

“I don't create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.”

“If we could do high-speed rail in California just half a notch above what they've done on the Shanghai line in China, and if we had a straight path from L.A. to San Francisco, as well as the milk run, at least that would be progress.”

“I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don't believe in the whole thing of just using other people's money. I don't think that's right. I'm not going to ask other people to invest in something if I'm not prepared to do so myself.”

“It's OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”

“I think there are more politicians in favor of electric cars than against. There are still some that are against, and I think the reasoning for that varies depending on the person, but in some cases, they just don't believe in climate change - they think oil will last forever.”

“It's important that we attempt to extend life beyond Earth now. It is the first time in the four billion-year history of Earth that it's been possible, and that window could be open for a long time - hopefully it is - or it could be open for a short time. We should err on the side of caution and do something now.”

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

“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 that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”

“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.”

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

“I think there should be regulations on social media to the degree that it negatively affects the public good.”

“It's important that we attempt to extend life beyond Earth now. It is the first time in the four billion-year history of Earth that it's been possible, and that window could be open for a long time - hopefully it is - or it could be open for a short time. We should err on the side of caution and do something now.”

“I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.”

“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.”

“The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far - the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We're obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.”

“When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world.”

“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.”

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

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

“I think there should be regulations on social media to the degree that it negatively affects the public good.”

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

“I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.”

“I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.”

“There's a silly notion that failure's not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”

“If you're trying to create a company, it's like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.”

“Rockets are cool. There's no getting around that.”

“When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world.”

“If humanity doesn't land on Mars in my lifetime, I would be very disappointed.”

“We're already cyborgs. Your phone and your computer are extensions of you, but the interface is through finger movements or speech, which are very slow.”

“Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.”

“To make an embarrassing admission, I like video games. That's what got me into software engineering when I was a kid. I wanted to make money so I could buy a better computer to play better video games - nothing like saving the world.”

“Great companies are built on great products.”

“I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.”

“I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”

“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.”

“We could definitely make a flying car - but that's not the hard part. The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that's super safe and quiet? Because if it's a howler, you're going to make people very unhappy.”

“Stationary storage will be as big as the car business long term. The growth rate will probably be several times what it is for the car business.”

“My opinion is it's a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars.”

“A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. I just happen to be the face of the companies.”

“I think Tesla will most likely develop its own autopilot system for the car, as I think it should be camera-based, not Lidar-based. However, it is also possible that we do something jointly with Google.”

“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.”

“If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.”

“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.”

“Life is too short for long-term grudges.”

“Mars is the only place in the solar system where it's possible for life to become multi-planetarian.”

“Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.”

“The path to the CEO's office should not be through the CFO's office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.”

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”

“The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S.”

“The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad.”

“I'm anti-tax, but I'm pro-carbon tax.”

“When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.”

“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.”

“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 think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”

“There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What's the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.”

“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.”

“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.”

“A Prius is not a true hybrid, really. The current Prius is, like, 2 percent electric. It's a gasoline car with slightly better mileage.”

“When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.”

“Great companies are built on great products.”

“It is theoretically possible to warp spacetime itself, so you're not actually moving faster than the speed of light, but it's actually space that's moving.”

“My opinion is it's a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars.”

“It's not as though we can keep burning coal in our power plants. Coal is a finite resource, too. We must find alternatives, and it's a better idea to find alternatives sooner then wait until we run out of coal, and in the meantime, put God knows how many trillions of tons of CO2 that used to be buried underground into the atmosphere.”

“The pace of progress on Mars depends upon the pace of progress of SpaceX.”

“The rumours of the demise of the U.S. manufacturing industry are greatly exaggerated.”

“I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I'm really good at email.”

“The U.S. automotive industry has been selling cars the same way for over 100 years, and there are many laws in place to govern exactly how that is to be accomplished.”

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

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

“Stationary storage will be as big as the car business long term. The growth rate will probably be several times what it is for the car business.”

“I think there are more politicians in favor of electric cars than against. There are still some that are against, and I think the reasoning for that varies depending on the person, but in some cases, they just don't believe in climate change - they think oil will last forever.”

“Tesla is becoming a real car company.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I was born in Africa. I came to California because it's really where new technologies can be brought to fruition, and I don't see a viable competitor.”

“I don't create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.”

“Facebook is quite entrenched and has a network effect. It's hard to break into a network once it's formed.”

“The X is an amazing car, but we kind of got carried away with the art and technology. Obviously, you want great art. You want great technology. But we did get a little distracted from our mission, which was to advance the cause of electric vehicles. And it probably delayed us a little bit with the Model 3 as well.”

“I will never be happy without having someone. Going to sleep alone kills me.”

“The problem with car dealerships is you've already decided what you want to buy before you even go there, and you're really just going there to talk through some annoying negotiation.”

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

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

“Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.”

“Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That's pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement.”

“I'm trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.”

“We are the first species capable of self-annihilation.”

“If you look at space companies, they've failed either because they've had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.”

“Tesla is here to stay and keep fighting for the electric car revolution.”

“I've been to Disneyland, like, 10 times. I'm getting really tired of Disneyland.”

“Winning 'Motor Trend' Car of the year is probably the closest thing to winning the Oscar or Emmy of the car industry.”

“I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.”

“There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What's the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.”

“Even if producing CO2 was good for the environment, given that we're going to run out of hydrocarbons, we need to find some sustainable means of operating.”

“What most people know but don't realize they know is that the world is almost entirely solar-powered already. If the sun wasn't there, we'd be a frozen ice ball at three degrees Kelvin, and the sun powers the entire system of precipitation. The whole ecosystem is solar-powered.”

“SpaceX has the potential of saving the U.S. government $1 billion a year. We are opposed to creating an entrenched monopoly with no realistic means for anyone to compete.”

“I don't think it's a good idea to plan to sell a company.”

“I'd like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that's not just e-mail with a view.”

“My proceeds from the PayPal acquisition were $180 million. I put $100 million in SpaceX, $70m in Tesla, and $10m in Solar City. I had to borrow money for rent.”

“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.”

“In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution.”

“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.”

“As you heat the planet up, it's just like boiling a pot.”

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

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

“I don't think it's a good idea to plan to sell a company.”

“I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.”

“Generally, the view that I've had on Twitter is if you're on Twitter, you're in, like, the meme - you're in meme war land. If you're on Twitter, you're in the arena. And so, essentially, if you attack me, it is therefore OK for me to attack back.”

“The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You're encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren't that smart, who aren't that creative.”

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

“I think whenever something is - whenever there's something that affects the public good, then there does need to be some form of public oversight.”

“What I'm trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.”

“I care very deeply about the people at Tesla. I feel like I have a great debt to the people of Tesla who are making the company successful.”

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

“I'm interested in things that change the world or that affect the future and wondrous, new technology where you see it, and you're like, 'Wow, how did that even happen? How is that possible?'”

“It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will.”

“It is true that SpaceX is partially a government contractor, but it would be unfair to say that SpaceX is entirely a government contractor.”

“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.”

“The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad.”

“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.”

“Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.”

“It's obviously tricky to convert cellulose to a useful biofuel. I think actually the most efficient way to use cellulose is to burn it in a co-generation power plant. That will yield the most energy and that is something you can do today.”

“I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don't believe in the whole thing of just using other people's money. I don't think that's right. I'm not going to ask other people to invest in something if I'm not prepared to do so myself.”

“I usually describe myself as an engineer; that's basically what I've been doing since I was a kid.”

“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.”

“As you heat the planet up, it's just like boiling a pot.”

“I have made the mistaken assumption - and I will attempt to be better at this - of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season. And that is my mistake.”

“My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars - this is very important - so you don't have to carry the return fuel when you go there.”

“For all the supporters of Tesla over the years, and it's been several years now and there have been some very tough times, I'd just like to say thank you very much. I deeply appreciate the support, particularly through the darkest times.”

“The U.S. automotive industry has been selling cars the same way for over 100 years, and there are many laws in place to govern exactly how that is to be accomplished.”

“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.”

“I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people.”

“You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place.”

“So we originally expected to make about 35 gigawatt hours at the cell level and about 50 gigawatt hours at the module or pack level. Now we are expecting to do about 150 gigawatt hours in the same volumetric space as the original design.”

“Obviously Tesla is about helping solve the consumption of energy in a sustainable manner, but you need the production of energy in a sustainable manner.”

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

“There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What's the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.”

“I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I'm really good at email.”

“Automotive franchise laws were put in place decades ago to prevent a manufacturer from unfairly opening stores in direct competition with an existing franchise dealer that had already invested time, money and effort to open and promote their business.”

“It's very important to like the people you work with. Otherwise, your job is going to be quite miserable.”

“I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved.”

“"People tend to think like, 'Why should electric vehicles have a subsidy,' but they're not taking into account that all fossil fuel-burning vehicles fundamentally are subsidised by the cost—the environmental cost—to Earth, but nobody's paying for it... We are going to pay for it, obviously—in the future we'll pay for it. It's just not paid for now."—Elon Musk (interview with Joe Rogan, published 2018-09-06)”

“Man has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.”

“When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.”

“The X is an amazing car, but we kind of got carried away with the art and technology. Obviously, you want great art. You want great technology. But we did get a little distracted from our mission, which was to advance the cause of electric vehicles. And it probably delayed us a little bit with the Model 3 as well.”

“Holy flying fuck, that thing took off!”

“You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place.”

“Great companies are built on great products.”

“I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy.”

“I think there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multi-planetary in order to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen.”

“I like the word 'autopilot' more than I like the word 'self-driving.' 'Self-driving' sounds like it's going to do something you don't want it to do. 'Autopilot' is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.”

“Some companies out there quote a start of production that is substantially in advance of when customers get their cars.”

“I don’t get the little ship thing. You can’t show up at Mars in something the size of a rowboat. What if there are Martians? It would be so embarrassing.”

“The key to making things affordable is design and technology improvements, as well as scale.”

“Here in the West, people often don't like listening to their leaders, even if they are right.”

“It would be an incredible adventure. And life needs to be more than just solving every day problems. You need to wake up and be excited about the future”

“A utility can handle up to 20% of production from solar and that helps the grid because it produces electricity when needed. Solar power peaks in the middle of the day and that's also when air conditioning is running and businesses are operating, so power production matches usage.”

“If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.”

“The X is an amazing car, but we kind of got carried away with the art and technology. Obviously, you want great art. You want great technology. But we did get a little distracted from our mission, which was to advance the cause of electric vehicles. And it probably delayed us a little bit with the Model 3 as well.”

“One thing that is important is that, if you have a choice between a lower valuation with someone you really like, or higher valuation with someone you have a question mark about, take the lower valuation.”

“I wish we could be private with Tesla. It actually makes us less efficient to be a public company.”

“Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket - half a million dollars. It can be done.”

“I'd rather be optimistic and wrong; than pessimistic and right.”

“From an evolutionary standpoint, human consciousness has not been around very long. A little light just went on after four and a half billion years. How often does that happen? Maybe it is quite rare.”

“If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”

“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.”

“In terms of the Internet, it's like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a... collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system. It's a hugely impactful thing.”

“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.”

“I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.”

“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.”

“Sooner or later, we must expand life beyond our little blue mud ball--or go extinct.”

“On one of the SpaceX flights, we had a secret payload: a wheel of cheese. We flew to orbit and brought it back, so it was the world's first 'space cheese.' It was, in part, a tribute to Monty Python.”

“The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.”

“I would like to die on Mars; just not on impact.”

“The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it's the right thing to do. It's economics 101, elementary stuff.”

“Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.”

“We need to figure out how to have the things we love, and not destroy the world.”

“With DNA, you have to be able to tell which genes are turned on or off. Current DNA sequencing cannot do that. The next generation of DNA sequencing needs to be able to do this. If somebody invents this, then we can start to very precisely identify cures for diseases.”

“I really do encourage other manufacturers to bring electric cars to market. It's a good thing, and they need to bring it to market and keep iterating and improving and make better and better electric cars, and that's what going to result in humanity achieving a sustainable transport future. I wish it was growing faster than it is.”

“Since our primary competitors [in space launch] are national governments, the enforceability of patents is questionable.”

“Particularly Instagram, people look like they have a much better life than they really do. People basically seem like they are way better-looking than they really are, and they are way happier-seeming than they really are.”

“Even if there's a zombie apocalypse, you'll still be able to travel using the Tesla Supercharging system.”

“Trying to read our DNA is like trying to understand software code - with only 90% of the code riddled with errors. It's very difficult in that case to understand and predict what that software code is going to do.”

“Everything works in PowerPoint; but if you have the physical item or some demonstration software, that's much more convincing to people than a PowerPoint presentation or a business plan.”

“In the early days of aviation, there was a great deal of experimentation and a high death rate.”

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

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

“They [Apple] have hired people we've fired. We always jokingly call Apple the "Tesla Graveyard." If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I'm not kidding. ... cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches. You can't just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: Build me a car. But for Apple, the car is the next logical thing to finally offer a significant innovation. A new pencil or a bigger iPad alone were not relevant enough.”

“If you're entering anything where there's an existing marketplace, against large, entrenched competitors, then your product or service needs to be much better than theirs. It can't be a little bit better, because then you put yourself in the shoes of the consumer... you're always going to buy the trusted brand unless there's a big difference.”

“Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.”

“AI is much more advanced than people realize. ... Humanity's position on this planet depends on its intelligence so if our intelligence is exceeded, it's unlikely that we will remain in charge of the planet.”

“Starting a business is not for everyone. Starting a business - I'd say, number one is have a high pain threshold.”

“SpaceX's got 5,000 people. I get a lot of attention, but they are really doing the work.”

“The factory is the machine that builds the machine.”

“The probability of death is quite high on the first [human] mission [to Mars].”

“You could warm Mars up, over time, with greenhouse gases.”

“Guardian is the most insufferable newspaper on planet Earth.”

“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 key to making things affordable is design and technology improvements, as well as scale.”

“People are mistaken when they think that technology just automatically improves. It does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of people work very hard to make it better, and actually it will, I think, by itself degrade, actually. You look at great civilizations like Ancient Egypt, and they were able to make the pyramids, and they forgot how to do that. And then the Romans, they built these incredible aqueducts. They forgot how to do it.”

“If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilisations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilisations.”

“You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place.”

“Rocket tech applied to a car opens up revolutionary possibilities.”

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour.”

“The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.”

“Every person in your company is a vector. Your progress is determined by the sum of all vectors.”

“When I was a child, there's one thing I said: 'I never want to be alone.' That's what I would say. I don't want to be alone.”

“I don't think most people, even in the aerospace industry, like, know what question to ask. Like it took us a long time to even frame the question correctly. But once we could frame the question correctly, the answer was, I wouldn't say easy, but, the answer flowed once the question could be framed with precision. Framing that question with precision was very difficult.”

“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.”

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

“I believe there’s some explanation for this universe, which you might call God.”

“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.”

“I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.”

“The fundamental message that consumers should be taking today is that it's financially insane to buy anything other than a Tesla. It would be like owning a horse in three years. I mean, fine if you want to own a horse. But you should go into it with that expectation. If you buy a car that does not have the hardware for full self-driving, it is like buying a horse. And the only car that has the hardware for full self-driving is a Tesla.”

“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.”

“It’s so insane the way rockets work today. It would be like if you got a plane and the way you get to your destination is you bail out with a parachute over the city in question and your plane crash lands somewhere. That’s how rockets work today—with the exception of Falcon 9. This is completely bonkers.”

“The goal of Tesla is to accelerate sustainable energy, so we're going to take a step back and think about what's most likely to achieve that goal.”

“If it were to take longer to convince NASA and the authorities that we can do it versus just doing it, then [SpaceX] might just do it [ourselves]. It may literally be easier to just land Starship on the moon than try to convince NASA that we can.”

“I'm personally a moderate and a registered independent, so I'm not strongly Democratic or strongly Republican.”

“I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.”

“I didn’t really expect to make any money. If I could make enough to cover the rent and buy some food that would be fine. As it turns out, it turned out to be quite valuable in the end.”

“I'm anti-tax, but I'm pro-carbon tax.”

“I don’t have an issue with serving in the military per se, but serving in the South African army suppressing black people just didn’t seem like a really good way to spend time.”

“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.”

“I think South Africa is a great country.”

“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.”

“If you wanted to be close to the cutting edge, particularly in technology, you came to North America.”

“The fuel cell is just a fundamentally inferior way of delivering electrical energy to an electric motor than batteries.”

“Tuition costs are outrageous. Fortunately, they gave me a scholarship…so I only had to cover living expenses, books, etc., by working.”

“There's nothing - I've bought everything I want. I don't like yachts or anything; you know, I'm not a yacht person, and I've got pretty much the nicest plane I'd want to have.”

“One was the Internet, one was clean energy and one was space.”

“There's no better place in the world for technology start-ups than Silicon Valley; there's such an incredible well of talent and capital and resources. The whole system is set up to foster the creation of new companies.”

“I could either watch it happen, or be part of it.”

“America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.”

“We could figure out ways with small aerospace companies to do a low-cost spacecraft and lander. But we could not find a way to do a low-cost launcher, unless we went to the Russians.”

“Tesla is becoming a real car company.”

“Starting a business is not for everyone. Starting a business - I'd say, number one is have a high pain threshold.”

“The answer was we thought it could be done.”

“You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on... So it's a fixer-upper of a planet.”

“There is nothing inherently expensive about rockets. It's just that those who have built and operated them in the past have done so with horrendously poor efficiency.”

“Yeah, well I think anyone who likes fast cars will love the Tesla. And it has fantastic handling by the way. I mean this car will crush a Porsche on the track, just crush it. So if you like fast cars, you'll love this car. And then oh, by the way, it happens to be electric and it's twice the efficiency of a Prius.”

“Falcon One is going to be the lowest cost per flight to orbit of any production rocket.”

“Man has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.”

“Which means we’re cheaper than the Chinese, cheaper than [the] Russians or anywhere else – and we’re doing it in the United States with American labour costs.”

“Stationary storage will be as big as the car business long term. The growth rate will probably be several times what it is for the car business.”

“I think the reason it’s cheaper is, first of all, we are a private entity and we have a very lean system in here. What we have been able to do here at SpaceX is to cherry-pick, you know, the top one or two percent and give them, you know, capital to execute well and a clear mission, which is low cost, reliable access to space, and no other constraints.”

“The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You're encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren't that smart, who aren't that creative.”

“Well, I have tried to learn as much as possible from prior attempts.”

“We could definitely make a flying car - but that's not the hard part. The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that's super safe and quiet? Because if it's a howler, you're going to make people very unhappy.”

“If nothing else, we are committed to failing in a new way.”

“There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What's the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.”

“There’s a graveyard of prior attempts, a big graveyard. There’s probably some freshly dug graves just waiting to be filled. Our aspiration is to avoid that destination.”

“I'm interested in things that change the world or that affect the future and wondrous, new technology where you see it, and you're like, 'Wow, how did that even happen? How is that possible?'”

“I think we’ve got the risks pretty well characterized. I think we are at least avoiding the mistakes that have been made in the past.”

“With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. You know all those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, and he's like, yeah, he's sure he can control the demon? Doesn't work out.”

“We polled Tesla owners, do you want autopilot disabled or not. Not one person wanted it disabled. That's pretty telling.”

“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.”

“I think the rocket business is quite cyclic. There are a great many peaks and troughs.”

“If you want to grow a giant redwood, you need to make sure the seeds are ok, nurture the sapling, and work out what might potentially stop it from growing all the way along. Anything that breaks it at any point stops that growth.”

“Imagine creating a huge software program that can only be tested in little pieces on a computer that is slightly different from what it is supposed to run on. However, when you do run it as a whole on the actual computer for the first time, it must run almost flawlessly without a single significant bug. When is the last time you saw a software program do that?”

“I'm reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States - for the century, at least.”

“There's a silly notion that failure's not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”

“When thinking about starting a business, I think it’s actually better to start in a trough and come to market in a peak, than the other way around. Frankly, if anything does, and it’s almost cliché, space has a long-term future.”

“I really do encourage other manufacturers to bring electric cars to market. It's a good thing, and they need to bring it to market and keep iterating and improving and make better and better electric cars, and that's what going to result in humanity achieving a sustainable transport future. I wish it was growing faster than it is.”

“I want to be able to make sure that we have enough capital to survive at least three consecutive failures. If you want to make a small fortune in the launch vehicle business, start with a large one.”

“The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far - the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We're obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.”

“I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems... It's got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.”

“If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it's not.”

“The long term ultimate objective – the holy grail – is we would like to help make life multi-planetary.”

“My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment - my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.”

“We got to the moon, but have never done anything better since. I'm disappointed that we have not made more progress since Apollo. I don't even see a plan that says we're going to do better than Apollo to exceed that goal.”

“I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.”

“If we're going to have any chance of sending stuff to other star systems, we need to be laser-focused on becoming a multi-planet civilisation.”

“I like to be involved in things that change the world. The Internet did, and space will probably be more responsible for changing the world than anything else. If humanity can expand beyond the Earth, obviously that's where the future is.”

“I do think there is a lot of potential if you have a compelling product and people are willing to pay a premium for that. I think that is what Apple has shown. You can buy a much cheaper cell phone or laptop, but Apple's product is so much better than the alternative, and people are willing to pay that premium.”

“If we can be one of the companies that makes it possible for humans to become a multi-planetary species, that would be the Holy Grail. It sounds a bit crazy but it's going to happen, and only if people build the means to do so. We're making progress toward a greater philosophical goal while building a sound business.”

“The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S.”

“I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I've got kids and responsibilities, so I can't be my own test pilot. That wouldn't be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as it's a sensible thing to do.”

“When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.”

“If humanity doesn't land on Mars in my lifetime, I would be very disappointed.”

“Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.”

“It doesn’t do a great deal to advance the goal of humanity. I would pay $20 million not to spend six months in Russia. And besides this, my interest is how do we enable many other people to go to space, not necessarily me, personally.”

“The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn't even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we'd never have had the light bulb.”

“If we can build something that is capable of taking people and equipment to Mars, such that it can service a transportation infrastructure for humanity becoming a multi- planet species - which I think is a very, very important objective - then I would consider the mission of SpaceX successful, at that point.”

“I hate writing about personal stuff. I don't have a Facebook page. I don't use my Twitter account. I am familiar with both, but I don't use them.”

“We are used to things improving every year; we are used to having a better cell phone next year than this year; a better lap top. We are even used to some basic things, like we expect more from your car in next year’s model than last year’s model. But this is not the case in space; reliability and cost - those are the fundamental parameters of transportation - have not improved.”

“Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.”

“So even if a fire develops, it can't really attack the particularly vulnerable locations like the pneumatic system or the avionics or the engine bay. We want to be in the situation that even if a fire develops, the rocket just keeps going.”

“A great deal of bargaining power with suppliers. We are never locked in to anyone.”

“I'm interested in things that change the world or that affect the future and wondrous, new technology where you see it, and you're like, 'Wow, how did that even happen? How is that possible?'”

“I think it is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.”

“My approach is simply to seek out very talented people, ensure that the environment at SpaceX is as motivating & enjoyable as possible and establish clear & measurable objectives.”

“Rocket engineering is not like ditch digging. With ditch digging you can get 100 people and dig a ditch, and you will dig it a hundred times as faster if you get 100 people versus one. With rockets, you have to solve the problem of a particular level of difficulty; one person who can solve the problem is worth an infinite number of people who can’t.”

“I think that is a mistake and results in cloudy judgment on important technical issues. They can't tell if something is really good or not, so they just do what everyone else does, assuming it to be the safe bet.”

“If we're going to have any chance of sending stuff to other star systems, we need to be laser-focused on becoming a multi-planet civilisation.”

“We're adding a triple sign-off for all work done on the launch pad, on flight components, and flight critical GSE. You have a technician, a responsible engineer, and then quality assurance will sign the final, record all information, and take photographs of all the work that was done, and then make sure that all information is put into our quality assurance database, which is reviewed prior to launch.”

“This is the chance to fulfill a dream.”

“I’m nauseatingly pro-American. It is where great things are possible.”

“As life’s agents, it’s on our shoulders.”

“... I plan to travel to Mars and make it my home.”

“People should be travelling to Mars and doing it in our lifetime.”

“Only by breaking through to new paradigms of space travel will more than a handful of us ever get to Mars and make it a potentially livable place.”

“Getting to Mars is too big an accomplishment for us to feel proud by just by swinging by. We are a nation of enterprise as well as exploration, and we're not about to go there without making something of it.”

“Sending large numbers of people to explore and settle Mars in the decades ahead isn't inevitable, but it is entirely possible. The biggest challenge isn't the engineering and spacecraft, however difficult they may be. Instead, it's making sure that a sustained Mars campaign proceeds as a national priority, and that will happen only if the American people are behind it. We have the opportunity now to make this happen. We might not be so fortunate in the future.”

“So, I think the best analogy for rocket engineers, if you want to create complicated software, you can't run as an integrated whole, or run on the computer it's intended to run on, but, first time you run it, it has to run with no bugs. That's the essence of it. So ... we missed the mark there.”

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

“I'm reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States - for the century, at least.”

“It is definitely true that the fundamental enabling technology for electric cars is lithium-ion as a cell chemistry technology. In the absence of that, I don't think it's possible to make an electric car that is competitive with a gasoline car.”