EMElon Musk

106 collected words

Elon Musk

Dates not recorded

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

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 / quote

02Undated

I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. I just try to think about the future and not be sad

Elon Musk / quote

03Undated

You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on... So it's a fixer-upper of a planet.

Elon Musk / quote

04Undated

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 / quote

05Undated

I could go and buy one of the islands in theBahamas and turn it into my personal fiefdom, but I am much more interested in trying to build andcreate a new company.

Elon Musk / quote

06Undated

My proceeds from the PayPal acquisition were $180 million. I put $100 million in SpaceX, $70m in Tesla, and $10m in Solar City. I had to borrow money for rent.

Elon Musk / quote

07Undated

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

Elon Musk / quote

08Undated

Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.

Elon Musk / quote

09Undated

In terms of the Internet, it's like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a [?], like a collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system. It's a hugely impactful thing.

Elon Musk / quote

10Undated

If you're trying to create a company, it's like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.

Elon Musk / quote

11Undated

When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.

Elon Musk / quote

12Undated

Great companies are built on great products.

Elon Musk / quote

13Undated

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

Elon Musk / quote

14Undated

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.

Elon Musk / quote

15Undated

I don't create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.

Elon Musk / quote

16Undated

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You're encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren't that smart, who aren't that creative.

Elon Musk / quote

17Undated

I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It's the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.

Elon Musk / quote

18Undated

You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place.

Elon Musk / quote

19Undated

Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.

Elon Musk / quote

20Undated

I don't think it's a good idea to plan to sell a company.

Elon Musk / quote

21Undated

An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us.

Elon Musk / quote

22Undated

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

Elon Musk / quote

23Undated

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.

Elon Musk / quote

24Undated

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.

Elon Musk / quote