Elon Musk Quotes

“If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.”

“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”

“I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.”

“I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”

“I don't ever give up. I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated.”

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

“I take the position that I'm always to some degree wrong, and the aspiration is to be less wrong.”

“Great companies are built on great products.”

“It's OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”

“People should pursue what they're passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.”

“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 wouldn't say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I'd like my fear to be less because it's very distracting and fries my nervous system.”

“When my brother and I were starting our first company, instead of getting an apartment, we just rented a small office and we slept on the couch and we showered in the YMCA.”

“I do think there is a good framework for thinking. It is physics. Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy. When you want to do something new, you have to apply the physics approach.”

“I need to shift my mindset away from being in crisis mode, which it has been for about fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life.”

“I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying. One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree—make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e., the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”

“Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them.”

“Work hard, like, every waking hour. That's the thing I would say, particularly if you're starting a company. If you do the simple math—somebody else is working 50 hours a week and you're working 100, you'll get twice as done in the course of the year as the other company.”

“Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy. When you want to do something new, you have to apply the physics approach.”

“It only takes a tiny amount of fuel and oxygen combining in a bad spot to explode the engine.”