Elon Musk Quotes

105 Elon Musk Quotes (Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, Solar City)

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I think people can choose to be not ordinary.
Elon Musk

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

It is our destiny to go beyond our planet and develop sustainable environments elsewhere.
Elon Musk

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

Don’t be afraid of new arenas.
Elon Musk

Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive, and determination of the people behind it as the product they sell.
Elon Musk

The fastest way to make a small fortune in the aerospace industry is to start with a large one.
Elon Musk

Sooner or later we must expand life beyond this green and blue ball or go extinct.
Elon Musk

I do wanna go to space – and eventually it would be really cool if I could go to Mars.
Elon Musk

[As a child] I would just question things…
Elon Musk



The lens of history is a good way to filter more versus less important things.
Elon Musk

The Tesla Roadster… it’s a two-seater sports car, very high performance… In fact, it’s beat any Ferrari or Aston Martin in acceleration. And it has more than twice the energy efficiency of a Prius.
Elon Musk

As Edison said, ‘It’s one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration.’
Elon Musk

Disruptive technology where you really have a big technology discontinuity… tends to come from new companies.
Elon Musk

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

As far as new companies go, the car business is such a capital intensive business. It doesn’t lend itself to start-ups very well. You need to operate with incredible capital efficiency if you are going to be start-up and succeed in the car business.
Elon Musk

[On cashing out in 1999 for $307 million to Compaq.] Was the largest of all cash transactions for an Internet company. That was certainly a better outcome than I had ever expected.
Elon Musk

As you might imagine, when somebody tries to build an orbital launch vehicle which is not really all that distinguishable from an ICBM [Intercontinental Ballistic Missile], there’s a lot of regulation. And there probably should be, because you don’t want to launch something and end up hitting LA, where I live…
Elon Musk

Given the choice, I’d rather stick a fork in my hand than write about my personal life.
Elon Musk

You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be… better.
Elon Musk



When you try new things, you try this idea, that idea… well, a large number of them are not gonna work… and that has to be ok. If every time somebody comes up with an idea it has to be successful, you’re not gonna get people coming up with ideas.
Elon Musk

We ultimately want to be the company that makes a difference in extension of life beyond Earth – which is one of the most important things that life itself could achieve.
Elon Musk

You have to stay grounded in the short term, cause if you don’t do things that pay the bills, you’re not gonna achieve the ultimate launch and objective. But it’s nice to have that sort of Holy Grail – long-term potential out there as an inspiration for coming to work.
Elon Musk

There’s a big leap between making that first prototype and actually manufacturing it in a large quantity.
Elon Musk

You know early in life, I did lots of risky things when I didn’t have that much that was depending on me. Now, I have to be more cautious about risky things.
Elon Musk

It is easy to get somewhat blasé about a rocket factory if you’re here every day.
Elon Musk

I have to sort of bring myself back, think about the big picture and remind myself that this is, actually, pretty cool, unusual stuff.
Elon Musk

I’m a big believer in us becoming a space exploring civilization and, ultimately, extending life beyond earth.
Elon Musk

When I was in college I tried to think what are the really big problems that face the world, that, which will most affect the future of humanity? And the three that I thought were the most important were the Internet, transition to a sustainable energy economy, and the third was space exploration, in particular, making life multi-planetary.
Elon Musk

[On dropping out of his PhD at Stanford in energy storage technologies for electric vehicles two days in.] I was sort of forced to choose. You know, it’s either start the grad program or… do my Internet company.
Elon Musk



[On the beginning of the internet.] It seemed to me like humanity was acquiring a nervous system.
Elon Musk

I taught myself how to program computers when I was a kid. And bought my first computer when I was ten and sold my first commercial program when I was 12.
Elon Musk

My first company was not a consumer company. It was primarily providing Internet software to media companies to enable them to go online.
Elon Musk

The second company, Paypal, started off, originally, as EX.com. And then about a year after that the company merged with another company called Confinity.
Elon Musk

Whenever we demonstrated the system to people, they wouldn’t get excited about the aggregation of financial services. But they got really wowed by the fact that you could e-mail to somebody. And we were, like, ‘Wow, okay, that’s the easy part.’ But we started focusing on that.
Elon Musk

Initially the company was known as EX.com. And then we used PayPal as the consumer brand. And then about a year after the merge, we changed the company’s name from EX.com to PayPal to match the name of the product.
Elon Musk

You have to say, ‘Well, why did it succeed where others did not?’
Elon Musk

We figured out a way to authenticate bank accounts. So normally it’s really hard to authenticate bank accounts from the standpoint of pulling money from someone’s bank account ‘cause you can give us a bank account number.
Elon Musk

We figured out how to authenticate a bank account without anyone even seeing you.
Elon Musk

When somebody has a breakthrough innovation, it is rarely one little thing. Very rarely, is it one little thing. It’s usually a whole bunch of things that collectively amount to a huge innovation.
Elon Musk



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