Selected Quotes by Elon Musk
Elon Musk- Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a technologist, business magnate and investor.
He is the founder, CEO, and chief engineer of SpaceX. He is also an angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc. . He is also the owner and CTO of Twitter. He also founded The Boring Company and a co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI. He is also the president of the Musk Foundation, a philanthropic organization.
Musk is the wealthiest person in the world with an estimated net worth of USD 239 billion as of July 2023. This is according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He is worth USD 248.8 billion according to Forbes' Real Time Billionaires list. This is primarily due to his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.
Selected Quotes by Elon Musk:
“If the rules are such that you can’t make progress, then you have to fight the rules.”
Elon Musk, Goals
“I would like to die on Mars — just not on impact.”
Elon Musk, Goals
“One of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask. Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment.”
Elon Musk, Goals
“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, Goals
“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds aren’t in your favor.”
Elon Musk, Goals
“Take risks now. Do something bold. You won’t regret it.”
Elon Musk, Goals
“You guys are the magicians of the 21st century. Don’t let anything hold you back. Imagination is the limit. Go out there and create some magic.”
Elon Musk, Goals
“I think people can choose to be not ordinary. You know, they can choose to not necessarily conform to the conventions that were taught to them by their parents. So, yes, I think it’s possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”
Elon Musk, Goals
“Never. I don’t ever give up. I’d have to be dead or completely incapacitated. For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never.”
Elon Musk, Goals
“[Mars] would just be the greatest adventure. Ever. And very exciting. And I think 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.”
Elon Musk, Goals, Life
“I think it’s very difficult to start companies and quite painful. There’s a friend of mine who’s got a good phrase for doing a startup: ‘It’s like eating glass and staring into the abyss.’ If you’re sort of wired to do it, then you should do it, but not otherwise. If you need inspiring words, don’t do it.”
Elon Musk, Goals, Business
“A source of strength, hm. That’s really not how I think about things. For me it’s simply: This is something that is important to get done, and we we should just keep doing it or die trying. I don’t need a source of strength. [Quitting] is not in my nature, and I don’t care about optimism or pessimism. F*ck that, we’re gonna get it done.”
Elon Musk, Goals, Strength
“I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying. One bit of advice: It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details, or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”
Elon Musk, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Well, I do think there’s a good framework for thinking. It is physics. You know, the sort of first principles reasoning. What I mean by that is boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy. Through most of our life, we get through life by reasoning by analogy, which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations. And you have to do that. Otherwise, mentally, you wouldn’t be able to get through the day. But when you want to do something new, you have to apply the physics approach.”
Elon Musk, Goals, Intelligence/Wisdom, Science, Truth, Life
“It’s very important to actively seek out and listen very carefully to negative feedback. This is something that people tend to avoid because it’s painful, but I think this is a very common mistake. To not actively seek out and listen to negative feedback. […] When friends get a product, I say, ‘Look, don’t tell me what you like. Tell me what you don’t like.’ Because otherwise your friend is not going to tell you what he doesn’t like. You really need to sort of coax negative feedback. If somebody’s your friend or at least not your enemy, and they’re giving you negative feedback, then they may be wrong, but it’s coming from a good place.”
Elon Musk, Goals, Mistakes, Business
“Always take the position that you are to some degree wrong, and your goal is to be less wrong over time. One of the biggest mistakes people generally make, and I’m guilty of it too, is wishful thinking. You want something to be true, even if it isn’t true. And so you ignore the real truth because of what you want to be true. This is a very difficult trap to avoid. [So] just take that approach, that you’re always to some degree wrong, and your goal is to be less wrong.”
Elon Musk, Goals, Mistakes, Truth
“A good sign as to whether there’s free speech is: Is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like? If that is the case, then we have free speech. And it’s damn annoying when someone you don’t like says something you don’t like. [But] that is a sign of a healthy, functioning, free speech situation.”
Elon Musk, Freedom
“I read a quote from Arthur C. Clark which said that ‘A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ And that’s really true. If you go back say, 300 years, the things we take for granted today, you’d be burned at the stake for. Being able to fly. That’s crazy. Being able to see over long distances, being able to communicate, having, effectively, with the Internet, a group mind of sorts, and having access to all the world’s information instantly from almost anywhere on the earth. This is stuff that would be considered magic in times past. In fact, I think it actually goes beyond that, because there are many things that we take for granted today that weren’t even imagined in times past. That weren’t even in the realm of magic. So it actually goes beyond that. So I thought, well, if I can do some of those things – if I can advance technology, then that’s like magic, and that would be really cool.”
Elon Musk, Technology
“I feel fear quite strongly. It’s not as though I just have the absence of fear. I feel it quite strongly. But there are times when something is important enough, you believe in it enough, that you do it in spite of the fear. People shouldn’t think, ‘I feel fear about this, and therefore I shouldn’t do it.’ It’s normal to feel fear. There’d have to be something mentally wrong [with you] if you didn’t feel fear. […] If you just accept the probabilities, then that diminishes fear.”
Elon Musk, Courage
“When I was a little kid, I was really scared of the dark. But then I came to understand, okay, dark just means the absence of photons in the visible wavelength — 400 to 700 nanometers. Then I thought, well, it’s really silly to be afraid of a lack of photons. Then I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore after that.”
Elon Musk, Courage, Science
On why there is a need to go to Mars and beyond: “We can’t be one of those lame one-planet civilizations!”
Elon Musk, Funny
When he was asked why so many of the SpaceX rocket launches happen at night: “It’s much easier to do the CGI that way.”
Elon Musk, Funny
For the chemistry nerds: “Technically, alcohol is a solution.”
Elon Musk, Funny
“I put the art in fart.”
Elon Musk, Funny
“If there’s ever a scandal about me, please call it Elongate.”
Elon Musk, Funny
After he almost died from a misdiagnosed type of malaria which he acquired on his first vacation to Africa, in years: “That’s my lesson for taking a vacation: Vacations will kill you.”
Elon Musk, Funny
While holding a sink while entering Twitter HQ after acquiring the company: “Let that sink in!”
Elon Musk, Funny
On wrecking his McLaren F1 with Peter Thiel in the passenger seat: “We’re driving up Sand Hill Road, and Peter says: ‘So, what can this do?’ And then, probably number one on the list of my famous last words, I said: ‘Watch this.’”
Elon Musk, Funny
After acquiring Twitter to prioritize free speech on the platform again: “Next I’m buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in.”