Elon Musk
I will never be happy without having someone. Going to sleep alone kills me.Collection: Alone
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.Collection: Change
The U.S. automotive industry has been selling cars the same way for over 100 years, and there are many laws in place to govern exactly how that is to be accomplished.Collection: Car
Winning 'Motor Trend' Car of the year is probably the closest thing to winning the Oscar or Emmy of the car industry.Collection: Car
The X is an amazing car, but we kind of got carried away with the art and technology. Obviously, you want great art. You want great technology. But we did get a little distracted from our mission, which was to advance the cause of electric vehicles. And it probably delayed us a little bit with the Model 3 as well.Collection: Car
Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.Collection: Brainy
Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That's pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement.Collection: Design
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.Collection: War
The key to making things affordable is design and technology improvements, as well as scale.Collection: Technology
When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world.Collection: Teen
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.Collection: Space
The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn't even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we'd never have had the light bulb.Collection: Space
The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far - the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We're obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.Collection: History
When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.Collection: Motivational
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.Collection: Business
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.Collection: Business
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.Collection: Future
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.Collection: Business
It's OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.Collection: Business
We're running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere... can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.Collection: Environmental
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.Collection: Environmental
I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved.Collection: Great
It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will.Collection: Travel
Government isn't that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you've got to have commercial companies do it.Collection: Government
I'd like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that's not just e-mail with a view.Collection: Work
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.Collection: Communication
If humanity doesn't land on Mars in my lifetime, I would be very disappointed.Collection: Future
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.Collection: Future
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.Collection: Business
Great companies are built on great products.Collection: Business
I don't create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.Collection: Business
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.Collection: Business
Patience is a virtue, and I'm learning patience. It's a tough lesson.Collection: Patience
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.Collection: Sad
If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.Collection: Space
I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.Collection: Space
I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.Collection: Space
If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.Collection: Space
Automotive franchise laws were put in place decades ago to prevent a manufacturer from unfairly opening stores in direct competition with an existing franchise dealer that had already invested time, money and effort to open and promote their business.Collection: Business
There are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions.Collection: Technology
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.Collection: Good
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.Collection: Work
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.Collection: Morning
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.Collection: Money
I think there should be regulations on social media to the degree that it negatively affects the public good.Collection: Good
Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.Collection: Food
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?'Collection: Future
Rockets are cool. There's no getting around that.Collection: Science
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.Collection: Fear
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.Collection: Space