Elon Musk
People often mistake technology for a static picture. It's less like a picture and more like a movie. It's the velocity of technology innovation that matters. It's the acceleration.Collection: Mistake
I think there are too many smart people pursuing internet stuff, finance, and law. That is part of the reason why we haven't seen as much innovation.Collection: Smart
Weighing too much on someone's talent and not someone's personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.Collection: Inspirational
I came to the conclusion that we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Hard Work
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: Running
Does the logic connect? What are the range of probably outcomes? You want to figure out what those probabilities are and ideally be the House. It's fine to gamble, as long as you're the House. Also, listen to critical feedback, particularly from friends. Generally they will be thinking it but they won't tell you.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Energy
I realized that a methane-oxygen rocket engine could achieve a specific impulse greater than 380.Collection: Oxygen
It was obvious to me that we could never colonize Mars without reusability, any more than America would have been colonized if they had to burn the ships after every trip.Collection: America
It is despairing to consider that the cost and reliability of access to space have barely changed since the Apollo era over three decades ago. Yet in virtually every other field of technology, we have made great strides in reducing cost and increasing capability.Collection: Technology
The overarching goal of Tesla is to help reduce carbon emissions and that means low cost and high volume. We will also serve as an example to the auto industry, proving that the technology really works and customers want to buy electric vehicles.Collection: Mean
Target launch date for Falcon I maiden flight is Halloween(October 31) from our island launch complex in the Kwajalein Atoll. For potential customers out there, I should mention that Kwajalein has some of the worlds best scuba diving and snorkeling! It is literally a tropical paradise.Collection: Halloween
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.Collection: Needs
You can just reload, propel it and fly again. This is extremely important for revolutionizing access to space because as long as we continue to throw away rockets and space crafts, we will never truly have access to space.Collection: Space
There's a real opportunity to have a vertical takeoff and landing electric supersonic jet.Collection: Real
With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it's like, yeah, he's sure he can control the demon. Didn't work out.Collection: Work Out
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: Moving
Let's think beyond the normal stuff and have an environment where that sort of thinking is encouraged and rewarded and where it's okay to fail as well. Because 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 okay. If every time somebody comes up with an idea it has to be successful, you're not gonna get people coming up with ideas.Collection: Inspirational
Entrepreneurship is like eating glass and walking on hot coals at the same timeCollection: Glasses
I want to make rockets 100 times, if not 1,000 times better. The ultimate objective is to make humanity a multiplanet species. Thirty years from now, there'll be a base on the moon and on Mars, and people will be going back and forth on SpaceX rockets.Collection: Future
The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication.Collection: Hurt
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.Collection: Squares
We have a strict 'no a-hole policy' at SpaceX. And we fire people they are. I mean, we give them a little bit of warning. But if they continue to be an a-hole, then they're fired.Collection: Mean
Humans need to be a multiplanet species.Collection: Needs
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.Collection: Inspirational
Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.Collection: Technology
In almost any industry, if you're passionate about doing a great job and making people that buy your product or service as happy as possible, it's really fulfilling.Collection: People
It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.Collection: Inspirational
You want to do things you’re passionate about but also are useful to other people.Collection: People
You want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse.Collection: Inspirational
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: Morning
You have to be pretty driven to make it happen. Otherwise, you will just make yourself miserable.Collection: Inspirational
If something's important enough, you should try. Even if you - the probable outcome is failure.Collection: Inspirational
Physics is a good framework for thinking. ... Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.Collection: Inspirational
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 successCollection: Dream
We need to figure out how to have the things we love, and not destroy the world.Collection: Needs
Actively seek out and listen carefully to negative feedback.Collection: Negative
I started SpaceX with the expectation of failure.Collection: Expectations
You shouldn't do things differently just because they're different. They need to be... better.Collection: Inspirational
For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never.Collection: Giving Up
The extension of life beyond Earth is the most important thing we can do as a species.Collection: Moon
You should be innovating so fast that you're invalidating your prior patents.Collection: Patents
I think you should always be seeking negative feedback.Collection: Thinking
Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.Collection: Inspirational
There's a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.Collection: Risk
My mentality is that of a samurai. I would rather commit seppuku than fail.Collection: Samurai
As a child I would just question things.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Views