Elon Musk Quotes

105 Elon Musk Quotes

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Innovation is a collection of complex things that are usually difficult to convey so there is some sound byte that’s given.
Elon Musk

I would just question things… It would infuriate my parents… That I wouldn’t just believe them when they said something ‘cause I’d ask them why. And then I’d consider whether that response made sense given everything else I knew.
Elon Musk

We sold PayPal to Ebay for about a billion and a half.
Elon Musk

I think there’s… plenty of public will for space exploration particularly in the United States which is a nation of explorers.
Elon Musk

The long term vision is to help make life multi-planetary.
Elon Musk

Boeing and Lockheed are the two biggest contractors to NASA. So when you see a rocket getting launched it is either a Boeing, or a Rocky, Lockheed Rocket, typically. NASA does not build the rockets. But NASA will contract with the aerospace companies…
Elon Musk

No one has ever developed a fully developed, a fully reusable orbital transportation system.
Elon Musk

What are the most important elements in the history of life itself?
Elon Musk

[On Tesla Motors] I funded the company and worked with those three guys to develop the Tesla Roadster.
Elon Musk

The Roadster is more than twice as good as a Prius. But it’s $100,000. And the reason is because new technology takes time to optimize.
Elon Musk



[On Solar City.] How do you like this proposition? You put no money down, and your electricity bill goes down?… So they’re growing like gang busters.
Elon Musk

[‘You have triplets and twins?’] Yeah, all boys.
Elon Musk

[In June 2008] Right now I’m probably 60 percent SpaceX, 35 percent Tesla, and five percent Solar City and everything else.
Elon Musk

Laws can be broken where you can find some corner case in a very unusual circumstance that will break it.
Elon Musk

[In June 2008] Getting the right people is extremely important. And I actually interview everyone at SpaceX personally. And we’re a 500 person company. So that’s a lot of interviews.
Elon Musk

It’s very important to like the people you work with, otherwise life [and] your job is gonna be quite miserable.
Elon Musk

We have a strict ‘no-assholes policy’ at SpaceX.
Elon Musk

If your boss is an awful person, you’re gonna hate coming to work.
Elon Musk

I think the United States is more open to new ideas than any country in the world. And I think becomes somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that because the United States is open to new ideas, it attracted people from the world who had new ideas.
Elon Musk

[On the United States] It’s filled with people who like new ideas. And who aren’t bound by history.
Elon Musk



A lot of the countries that have been around for a long time are really trapped in their own history.
Elon Musk

[On his role models] I think Edison was certainly a role model probably one of the biggest role models.
Elon Musk

I’m a bigger fan of Edison than Tesla because Edison brought his stuff to market and made those inventions accessible to the world, whereas Tesla didn’t really do that.
Elon Musk

I actually thought [Walt] Disney was a pretty good innovator. I like Disney…
Elon Musk

It’s very important that SpaceX is profitable, or we’ll not be able to earn the money necessary to continue future developments…
Elon Musk

What makes innovative thinking happen?… I think it’s really a mindset. You have to decide.
Elon Musk

Just showing up is half the battle. You gotta try hard to do it, and don’t be afraid of failure.
Elon Musk

You also need to be rooted in reality. It’s easy to get high on your own supply.
Elon Musk

Don’t delude yourself into thinking something’s working when it’s not, or you’re gonna get fixated on a bad solution.
Elon Musk

Sometimes the customer doesn’t actually know what they need.
Elon Musk



As a huge fan of the popular computer game ‘Space Invaders,’ I taught myself how to write computer code and designed my own game called ‘Blast Star’ at the age of 12. I later sold the code to a computer magazine for $500, which back then was a lot of money for a young boy.
Elon Musk

It has always been my belief that it is our destiny to go beyond our planet and develop sustainable environments elsewhere.
Elon Musk

I was disappointed with the lack of innovation in the field of space exploration since man first landed on the moon almost 34 years ago. I figured that if I wanted to go to space and help us in the quest for other planets, I was better off building my own rocket. In the summer of 2002, I founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX)…
Elon Musk

The private sector is very good at organization and innovation.
Elon Musk

If something has to be designed and invented, and you have to figure out how to ensure that the value of the thing you create is greater than the cost of the inputs, then that is probably my core skill.
Elon Musk

[In August 2009 on the Tesla Roadster] Zero to 60 in a 3.9 seconds.
Elon Musk

[In August 2009 on Tesla] The whole purpose behind Tesla, the reason I put so much of my time and money into helping create the business, is we want to be a catalyst for accelerating the electric car revolution.
Elon Musk

[In August 2009] A good electric motor such as the one that we have in the Tesla roadster is about 90 percent efficient at turning electricity into motion, whereas a gasoline internal combustion is somewhere in the range of around 17 to 18 percent. Most of what it does is generate heat.
Elon Musk

[In August 2009] If you look at the pace of battery improvement, it is clear that it is inevitable. The future will be entirely electric.
Elon Musk

I try not to be controversial.
Elon Musk



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