Elon Musk

Facebook is quite entrenched and has a network effect. It's hard to break into a network once it's formed.

Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.

America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.

A Prius is not a true hybrid, really. The current Prius is, like, 2 percent electric. It's a gasoline car with slightly better mileage.

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.

Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.

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

My opinion is it's a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars.

Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket - half a million dollars. It can be done.

If you think back to the beginning of cell phones, laptops or really any new technology, it's always expensive.

I don't spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.

I don't create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.

As you heat the planet up, it's just like boiling a pot.

I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems... It's got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.

I've actually made a prediction that within 30 years a majority of new cars made in the United States will be electric. And I don't mean hybrid, I mean fully electric.

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.

If you go back back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic - being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

Life is too short for long-term grudges.

I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.

When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world.

I've actually not read any books on time management.

There's a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.

Talent is extremely important. It's like a sports team, the team that has the best individual player will often win, but then there's a multiplier from how those players work together and the strategy they employ.

The tough thing is figuring out what questions to ask, but [ ] once you do that, the rest is really easy.

Great companies are built on great products.

I think it's 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 it's like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths and then reason up from there.

And we need things in life that are exciting and inspiring. It can't just be about solving some awful problem. There have to be reasons to get up in the morning.

Weighing too much on someone's talent and not someone's personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

The idea of lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. It sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I'd be super-duper bored. I like high intensity.