“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” — Elon Musk
“You get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of problems you solve.” — Elon Musk
“Work like hell. I mean, you just have to put in 80 to 100-hour weeks every week. This improves the odds of success.” — Elon Musk
“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.” — Elon Musk
“I think it’s very difficult to start companies and quite painful. If you need inspiring words, don’t do it.” — Elon Musk
“No, I don’t ever give up. I’d have to be dead or completely incapacitated.” — Elon Musk
“I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.” — Elon Musk
“Mars would just be the greatest adventure. Ever. And very exciting. And I think 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.” — Elon Musk
“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: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.” — Elon Musk
“Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.” — Elon Musk
“I think people can choose to be not ordinary. You know, they can choose to not necessarily conform to the conventions that were taught to them by their parents. So, yes, I think it’s possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.” — Elon Musk
“Mark my words — A.I. is far more dangerous than nukes.” — Elon Musk
“If there’s ever a scandal about me, please call it Elongate.” — Elon Musk
“One of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask. Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy.” — Elon Musk
“Stop being patient and start asking yourself, how do I accomplish my 10-year plan in 6 months? You will probably fail but you will be a lot further ahead of the person who simply accepted it was going to take 10 years.” — Elon Musk
“If somebody is doing something that is useful to the rest of society, I think that’s a good thing. Stuff doesn’t need to change the world to be good.” — Elon Musk
“My proceeds from the PayPal acquisition were $180 million. I put $100 million in SpaceX, $70 million in Tesla, and $10 million in Solar City. I had to borrow money for rent.” — Elon Musk
“The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.” — Elon Musk
“When friends get a product, I say, ‘Look, don’t tell me what you like. Tell me what you don’t like.’ Because otherwise your friend is not going to tell you what he doesn’t like. You really need to sort of coax negative feedback.” — Elon Musk
“Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.” — Elon Musk
“When I was a little kid, I was really scared of the dark. But then I came to understand, dark just means the absence of photons in the visible wavelength — 400 to 700 nanometers. Then I thought, well, it’s really silly to be afraid of a lack of photons. Then I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore after that.” — Elon Musk
“I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying. 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.” — Elon Musk
Community Notes