Elon Musk

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

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

Stationary storage will be as big as the car business long term. The growth rate will probably be several times what it is for the car business.

From an evolutionary standpoint, human consciousness has not been around very long. A little light just went on after four and a half billion years. How often does that happen? Maybe it is quite rare.

We could definitely make a flying car - but that's not the hard part. The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that's super safe and quiet? Because if it's a howler, you're going to make people very unhappy.

If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilisations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilisations.

Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.

The goal of Tesla is to accelerate sustainable energy, so we're going to take a step back and think about what's most likely to achieve that goal.

There's a silly notion that failure's not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.

I started SpaceX with the expectation of failure.

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

Many things are improbable, only a few are impossible.

Don't be afraid of new arenas.

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

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

If something's important enough, you should try. Even if you - the probable outcome is failure.

Patience is a virtue, and I'm learning patience. It's a tough lesson.

Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.

Let's think beyond the normal stuff and have an environment where that sort of thinking is encouraged and rewarded and where it's okay to fail as well. Because when you try new things, you try this idea, that idea... well a large number of them are not gonna work, and that has to be okay. If every time somebody comes up with an idea it has to be successful, you're not gonna get people coming up with ideas.

You have to be pretty driven to make it happen. Otherwise, you will just make yourself miserable.