“100+ Elon Musk Quotes” is a collection of thought-provoking and visionary quotes from the innovative entrepreneur and CEO, Elon Musk. With over a hundred quotes, this compilation offers insights into Musk’s perspective on technology, space exploration, and the future of humanity. Each quote reflects his determination, audacity, and his mission to drive technological advancements. It’s a valuable resource for tech enthusiasts, aspiring entrepreneurs, and those seeking inspiration in the realms of science and innovation. Whether you admire his work or simply appreciate visionary thinking, this anthology provides a profound and enlightening journey through Elon Musk’s words and his impact on the world.
Elon Musk Quotes
1. “I’d rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.” ― Elon Musk
2. “If something’s important enough, you should try. Even if – the probable outcome is a failure.” ― Elon Musk
3. “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
4. “Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.” ― Elon Musk
5. “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
6. “Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.” ― Elon Musk
7. “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” ― Elon Musk
8. “I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.” ― Elon Musk
9. “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
10. “Great companies are built on great products.” ― Elon Musk
11. “I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.” ― Elon Musk
12. “I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.” ― Elon Musk
13. “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
14. “It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.” ― Elon Musk
15. “Life is too short for long-term grudges.” ― Elon Musk
16. “Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.” ― Elon Musk
17. “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.” ― Elon Musk
18. “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
19. “Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.” ― Elon Musk
20. “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.” ― Elon Musk
21. “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
22. “If humanity doesn’t land on Mars in my lifetime, I would be very disappointed.” ― Elon Musk
23. “People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.” ― Elon Musk
24. “Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.” ― Elon Musk
25. “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.” ― Elon Musk
26. “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
27. “I will never be happy without having someone. Going to sleep alone kills me.” ― Elon Musk
28. “I’m anti-tax, but I’m pro-carbon tax.” ― Elon Musk
29. “It’s very important to like the people you work with. Otherwise, your job is going to be quite miserable.” ― Elon Musk
30. “Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.” ― Elon Musk
31. “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
32. “When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world.” ― Elon Musk
33. “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.” ― Elon Musk
34. “I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.” ― Elon Musk
35. “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
36. “I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.” ― Elon Musk
37. “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.” ― Elon Musk
38. “If I’m not in love, if I’m not with a log-term companion, I cannot be happy.” ― Elon Musk
39. “I think there should be regulations on social media to the degree that it negatively affects the public good.” ― Elon Musk
40. “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
41. “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
42. “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
43. “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.” ― Elon Musk
44. “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.” ― Elon Musk
45. “I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.” ― Elon Musk
46. “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.” ― Elon Musk
47. “Starting a business is not for everyone. Starting a business – I’d say, number one is have a high pain threshold.” ― Elon Musk
48. “Tesla is here to stay and keep fighting for the electric car revolution.” ― Elon Musk
49. “The factory is the machine that builds the machine.” ― Elon Musk
50. “I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I’m really good at email.” ― Elon Musk
51. “I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.” ― Elon Musk
52. “As you heat the planet up, it’s just like boiling a pot.” ― Elon Musk
53. “I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.” ― Elon Musk
54. “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.” ― Elon Musk
55. “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
56. “My opinion is it’s a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars.” ― Elon Musk
57. “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
58. “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 Musk
59. “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.” ― Elon Musk
60. “If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.” ― Elon Musk
61. “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.” ― Elon Musk
62. “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.” ― Elon Musk
63. “Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It’s really counterintuitive.” ― Elon Musk
64. “The key to making things affordable is design and technology improvements, as well as scale.” ― Elon Musk
65. “We are the first species capable of self-annihilation.” ― Elon Musk
66. “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
67. “America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.” ― Elon Musk
68. “I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy.” ― Elon Musk
69. “I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.” ― Elon Musk
70. “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.” ― Elon Musk
71. “I’ve actually not read any books on time management.” ― Elon Musk
72. “Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket – half a million dollars. It can be done.” ― Elon Musk
73. “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
74. “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.” ― Elon Musk
75. “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.” ― Elon Musk
76. “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
77. “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.” ― Elon Musk
78. “I’ve been to Disneyland, like, 10 times. I’m getting really tired of Disneyland.” ― Elon Musk
79. “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.” ― Elon Musk
80. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.” ― Elon Musk
81. “You could warm Mars up, over time, with greenhouse gases.” ― Elon Musk
82. “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.” ― Elon Musk
83. “If you think back to the beginning of cell phones, laptops or really any new technology, it’s always expensive.” ― Elon Musk
84. “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.” ― Elon Musk
85. “I’m reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States – for the century, at least.” ― Elon Musk
86. “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
87. “Nobody wants to buy a $60,000 electric Civic. But people will pay $90,000 for an electric sports car.” ― Elon Musk
88. “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.” ― Elon Musk
89. “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.” ― Elon Musk
90. “Facebook is quite entrenched and has a network effect. It’s hard to break into a network once it’s formed.” ― Elon Musk
91. “I wish we could be private with Tesla. It actually makes us less efficient to be a public company.” ― Elon Musk
92. “If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.” ― Elon Musk
93. “If you had to buy a new plane every time you flew somewhere, it would be incredibly expensive.” ― Elon Musk
94. “I’m trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.” ― Elon Musk
95. “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
96. “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.” ― Elon Musk
97. “The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it’s the right thing to do. It’s economics 101, elementary stuff.” ― Elon Musk
98. “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.” ― Elon Musk
99. “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
100. “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.” ― Elon Musk
101. “I’m glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That’s cool.” ― Elon Musk
102. “Man has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.” ― Elon Musk
103. “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.” ― Elon Musk
104. “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.” ― Elon Musk
