Elon Musk

What I'm trying to do is to maximise the probability of the future being better.

I'm extremely confident that solar will be at least a plurality of power, and most likely a majority... in less than 20 years.

I think you should always be seeking negative feedback.

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.

For me it was never about money, but solving problems for the future of humanity.

Don't just follow the trend. You may have heard me say that it's good to think in terms of the physics approach of first principles. Which is, rather than reasoning by analogy, you boil things down to the most fundamental truths you can imagine and you reason up from there.

When we got Tesla going at the very beginning, if you asked me what I thought the odds of success were, I would have said less than 50%. I would have said that failure is the most likely outcome.

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.

Engineering is the closest thing to magic that exists in the world.

I'm increasingly inclined to think there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level just to make sure that we don't do something very foolish.

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.

When you struggle with a problem, that's when you understand it.

Funded by the government just means funded by the people. Government, by the way, has no money. It only takes money from the people. Sometimes people forget that that's really what occurs.

You want to do things you're passionate about but also are useful to other people.

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.

You should be innovating so fast that you're invalidating your prior patents

With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.

People will buy the car just because it's a great car. We want them to think it's excellent value for money and then, oh yeah, it happens to be electric.

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.

Well, my motivation behind Tesla is really to do as much good as possible for the environment and the electric-vehicle revolution. I think there is still a lot of work to do and if we were to sell to a big company, I'm not sure it would progress at the same pace.

The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication.

Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of what you're doing is as valuable as gold

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

Actively seek out and listen carefully to negative feedback.

It's a fixer-upper of a planet but we could make it work.

I read books and talked to people. I mean that's kind of how one learns anything. There's lots of great books out there & lots of smart people.

I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it's probably that. So we need to be very careful...With artificial intelligence we're summoning the demon.

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.

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.

Many things are improbable, only a few are impossible.