Elon Musk

I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.

The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S.

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'd never have had the light bulb.

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 the U.S. Whenever you have an unpriced externality, you have a bit of a market failure, to the degree that eternality remains unpriced.

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

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.

Government isn't that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you've got to have commercial companies do it.

Going from PayPal, I thought: 'Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?' Not from the perspective, 'What's the best way to make money?'

With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it's like, yeah, he's sure he can control the demon. Didn't work out.

We are the first species capable of self-annihilation.

Every mode of transport that we use - whether it's planes, trains, automobiles, bikes, horses - is reusable, but not rockets. So we must solve this problem in order to become a space-faring civilization.

People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.

The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it's the right thing to do. It's economics 101, elementary stuff.

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

Silicon Valley has evolved a critical mass of engineers and venture capitalists and all the support structure - the law firms, the real estate, all that - that are all actually geared toward being accepting of startups.

We're already cyborgs. Your phone and your computer are extensions of you, but the interface is through finger movements or speech, which are very slow.

The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.

There are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions.

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.

I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.

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