Quotes by Elon Musk

“I could go and buy one of the islands in theBahamas and turn it into my personal fiefdom, but I am much more interested in trying to build andcreate a new company.”

“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 i...”

“I think its important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because its like somethin...”

“I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. I just try to think about the future and not be sad”

“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.”

“My proceeds from the PayPal acquisition were $180 million. I put $100 million in SpaceX, $70m in Tesla, and $10m in Solar City. I had to borrow money for rent.”

“Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of whatever youre doing is as valuable as gold.”

“Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.”

“If something's important enough, you should try. Even if you - the probable outcome is failure.”

“There's a silly notion that failure's 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 we're not incorporating the true damage to the environment and the hidden costs of mining oil and transporting it to th...”

“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...”

“Rockets are cool. There's no getting around that.”

“I'm glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That's cool.”

“I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I've got kids and responsibilities, so I can't be my own test pilot. That wouldn't b...”

“I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I'm really good at email.”

“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: co...”

“Nobody wants to buy a $60,000 electric Civic. But people will pay $90,000 for an electric sports car.”

“I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.”

“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...”