Top 291 Quotes & Sayings by Elon Musk - Page 4

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

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

One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree - make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.

You want to do things you’re passionate about but also are useful to other people.

The extension of life beyond Earth is the most important thing we can do as a species.

I read books and talked to people. I mean that's kind of how one learns anything. There's lots of great books out there & lots of smart people.

You have to be pretty driven to make it happen. Otherwise, you will just make yourself miserable.

Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

You shouldn't do things differently just because they're different. They need to be... better.

Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of what you're doing is as valuable as gold

I always had an existential crisis, trying to figure out ‘what does it all mean?’ I came to the conclusion that if we can advance the knowledge of the world, if we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness, then, we’re better able to ask the right questions and become more enlightened. That’s the only way to move forward.

I think that's an important thing to do, to really pay attention to negative feedback, and solicit it, particularly from friends. This may sound like simple advice, but hardly anyone does that, and it's incredibly helpful.

Physics is a good framework for thinking. ... Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.

Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you’re putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing you know that you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve.

The tough thing is figuring out what questions to ask, but […] once you do that, the rest is really easy.

If you go back 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.

And we need things in life that are exciting and inspiring. It can't just be about solving some awful problem. There have to be reasons to get up in the morning.

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

No I don't ever give up. I would have to be dead or completely incapacitated

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

You could power the entire United States with about 150 to 200 square kilometers of solar panels, the entire United States. Take a corner of Utah... there's not much going on there, I've been there. There's not even radio stations.

Most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying.

My mentality is that of a samurai. I would rather commit seppuku than fail.

Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.

For me it was never about money, but solving problems for the future of humanity.

What I'm trying to do is to maximise the probability of the future being better.

When you struggle with a problem, that's when you understand it.

Fear is a hard thing to deal with. I feel it quite strongly. If I think something is important enough, I'll make myself do it in spite of fear. But it can really sap the will. I hate fear, I wish I had it less.

The biggest mistake, in general, I've made, is to put too much of a weighting on someone's talent and not enough on their personality. And I've made that mistake several times. I think it actually matters whether somebody has a good heart, it really does. I've made the mistake of thinking that it's sometimes just about the brain.

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.

Don’t just follow the trend. You may have heard me say that it’s good to think in terms of the physics approach of first principles. Which is, rather than reasoning by analogy, you boil things down to the most fundamental truths you can imagine and you reason up from there.

You want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse.

The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.

I started SpaceX with the expectation of failure.

Focus on something that has high value to someone else, be really rigorous in making that assessment, because natural human tendency is wishful thinking, so the challenge to entrepreneurs is telling what's the difference between really believing in your ideals and sticking to them as opposed to pursuing some unrealistic dream that doesn't actually have merit, be very rigorous in your self analysis, certainly being extremely tenacious, and just work like hell. Put in 80-100 hours every week. All these things improves the odds of success

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

Actively seek out and listen carefully to negative feedback.

Talent is extremely important. It's like a sports team, the team that has the best individual player will often win, but then there’s a multiplier from how those players work together and the strategy they employ.

I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.

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

Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.

We have this handy fusion reactor in the sky called the sun, you don't have to do anything, it just works. It shows up every day.

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.

Engineering is the closest thing to magic that exists in the world.

Many things are improbable, only a few are impossible.

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

I think you should always be seeking negative feedback.

You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that's wrong with it and fix it.

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

Funded by the government just means funded by the people. Government, by the way, has no money. It only takes money from the people. Sometimes people forget that that's really what occurs.

If you're co-founder or CEO, you have to do all kinds of tasks you might not want to do. If you don't do your chores, the company won't succeed. No task is too menial.

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

For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never.

Optimism, pessimism, f**k that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work.

You should be innovating so fast that you're invalidating your prior patents.

I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.

With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.

When people really understand it's do or die [and] if we work hard and pull through, it's going to be a great outcome; people will give it everything they've got.

I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it's probably that. So we need to be very careful...With artificial intelligence we're summoning the demon.

Don't be afraid of new arenas.