Quotes by Elon Musk

When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, Nah, whats wrong with a horse? That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.

Great companies are built on great products.

Its OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.

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.

I dont create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. Youre encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who arent that smart, who arent that creative.

I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. Its the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.

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.

Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.

I dont think its a good idea to plan to sell a company.

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.

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

Theres a silly notion that failures not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

The reality is gas prices should be much more expensive then they are because were 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.

There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? Whats 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.

Rockets are cool. Theres no getting around that.

Im glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. Thats cool.

I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now Ive got kids and responsibilities, so I cant be my own test pilot. That wouldnt be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as its a sensible thing to do.

I think its very important to have a feedback loop, where youre constantly thinking about what youve done and how you could be doing it better. I think thats the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. Im really good at email.