"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."
Elon MuskTiny Panda Quotes
Quotes by Elon Musk
Elon Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a South African-born Canadian-American entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and Tesla, among other companies. He is also involved in industries such as commercial spaceflight, electronic payments, and artificial intelligence. In addition to being an accomplished inventor and engineer who has achieved success in these fields (he was the 2017 Time Person of the Year), he is also known for his sometimes volatile personal behavior as well as its impact on media perception.
Learn more in our Tiny Panda blog post about Elon Musk.
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"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."
Elon Musk"It's OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket."
Elon Musk"Great companies are built on great products."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"I don't create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"I don't think it's a good idea to plan to sell a company."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"Starting a business is not for everyone. Starting a business - I'd say, number one is have a high pain threshold."
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."
Elon Musk"I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I'm really good at email."
Elon Musk"Any product that needs a manual to work is broken."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"The key to making things affordable is design and technology improvements, as well as scale."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"If something's important enough, you should try. Even if - the probable outcome is failure."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"If humanity doesn't land on Mars in my lifetime, I would be very disappointed."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence."
Elon Musk"Patience is a virtue, and I'm learning patience. It's a tough lesson."
Elon Musk"Life is too short for long-term grudges."
Elon Musk"When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor."
Elon Musk"America is the spirit of human exploration distilled."
Elon Musk"In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution."
Elon Musk"I think it matters whether someone has a good heart."
Elon Musk"Mars is the only place in the solar system where it's possible for life to become multi-planetarian."
Elon Musk"You could warm Mars up, over time, with greenhouse gases."
Elon Musk"Rockets are cool. There's no getting around that."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"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?'"
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"I'm anti-tax, but I'm pro-carbon tax."
Elon Musk"As you heat the planet up, it's just like boiling a pot."
Elon Musk"Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good."
Elon Musk"I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact."
Elon Musk"I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration."
Elon Musk"Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket - half a million dollars. It can be done."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things."
Elon Musk"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."
Elon Musk"When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world."
Elon Musk