200+ Best Elon Musk Quotes on Education, Life & Success

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Here is an ultimate collection of the 200+ best Elon Musk quotes you need to know. Elon Musk is a South African-born American engineer, industrial designer, technology entrepreneur, and philanthropist. Elon is a co-founder of the electronic-payment form PayPal and a founder, CEO, CTO, and chief designer of SpaceX. He also invested in Tesla, an…

Best Elon Musk Quotes min

Here is an ultimate collection of the 200+ best Elon Musk quotes you need to know.

Elon Musk is a South African-born American engineer, industrial designer, technology entrepreneur, and philanthropist.

Elon is a co-founder of the electronic-payment form PayPal and a founder, CEO, CTO, and chief designer of SpaceX. He also invested in Tesla, an electric car company co-founded by veteran startup exec Martin Eberhard.

Elon is now richest person in the world with $229.1 Billion net worth.

Below are some famous Elon Musk quotes that will inspire and motivate you to achieve your full potential in business and life.

Best Elon Musk quotes of all time

“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.” – Elon Musk

“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

“Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.” – Elon Musk

“Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.” – Elon Musk

“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

“I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I’m really good at email.” – Elon Musk

“There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.” – Elon Musk

“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.” – Elon Musk

“If the rules are such that you can’t make progress, then you have to fight the rules.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk motivational quotes

“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

“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

“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.” – Elon Musk

“There’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.” – Elon Musk

“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.” – Elon Musk

“I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.” – Elon Musk

“Life is too short for long – term grudges.” – Elon Musk

“Really pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends. … Hardly anyone does that, and it’s incredibly helpful.” – Elon Musk

“I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself.” – 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. If other people are putting in 40 hour workweeks and you’re putting in 100 hour workweeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.” – Elon Musk

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

“Take risks now and do something bold. You won’t regret it.” – Elon Musk

“If something is important enough you should try, even if the probable outcome is a failure.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk inspirational quotes

“Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.” – Elon Musk

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

“If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic-being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.” – Elon Musk

“We’re going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work.” – Elon Musk

“The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.” – Elon Musk

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

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

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

“It’s very important to like the people you work with, otherwise life and your job is gonna be quite miserable” – Elon Musk

“If you need inspiring words, don’t do it.” – Elon Musk

“Good ideas are always crazy until they’re not” – Elon Musk

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

“Don’t confuse schooling with education. I didn’t go to Harvard but the people that work for me did.” – Elon Musk

“Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.” – Elon Musk

“Your Will is the most accurate way to predict the Future.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk quotes on entrepreneurship

“I operate on the physics approach to analysis. You boil things down to the first principles or fundamental truths in a particular area and then you reason up from there.” – Elon Musk

“If you’re a co-founder or CEO, you have to do all kinds of tasks you might not want to do… If you don’t do your chores, the company won’t succeed… No task is too menial.”  – Elon Musk

“I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.” – Elon Musk

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

“When somebody has a breakthrough innovation, it is rarely one little thing. Very rarely, is it one little thing. It’s usually a whole bunch of things that collectively amount to a huge innovation.” – Elon Musk

“Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It’s really counterintuitive.” – Elon Musk

“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

“The path to the CEO’s office should not be through the CFO’s office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.” – Elon Musk

“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

“I mean, there are examples of successful entrepreneurs who never graduated high school and there are those that have Ph.D.’s. So I think the important principle is to be dedicated to learning what you need to know, whether that is in school or empirically.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk quotes about success

“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

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.” – Elon Musk

“It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don’t know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.” – Elon Musk

“I do think there is a lot of potential if you have a compelling product and people are willing to pay a premium for that. I think that is what Apple has shown. You can buy a much cheaper cell phone or laptop, but Apple’s product is so much better than the alternative, and people are willing to pay that premium.” – Elon Musk

“I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.” – Elon Musk

“I don’t believe in process. In fact, when I interview a potential employee and he or she says that ‘it’s all about the process,’ I see that as a bad sign. 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

“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.” – Elon Musk

“I’ve actually not read any books on time management.” – Elon Musk

“Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.” – Elon Musk

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

“I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.” – Elon Musk

“You have to say, ‘Well, why did it succeed where others did not?’” – Elon Musk

“I would just question things… It would infuriate my parents… That I wouldn’t just believe them when they said something ’cause I’d ask them why. And then I’d consider whether that response made sense given everything else I knew.” – Elon Musk

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

Elon Musk quotes about business

“Everything works in PowerPoint; but if you have the physical item or some demonstration software, that’s much more convincing to people than a PowerPoint presentation or a business plan.” – Elon Musk

“I want to be able to make sure that we have enough capital to survive at least three consecutive failures. If you want to make a small fortune in the launch vehicle business, start with a large one.” – Elon Musk

“Everybody around here has slides in their lobbies. I’m actually wondering about putting in a roller coaster-like a functional roller coaster at the factory in Fremont. You’d get in, and it would take you around [the] factory but also up and down. Who else has a roller coaster? … It would probably be really expensive, but I like the idea of it.” – Elon Musk

“The thing to remember is that when companies are little, they’re like tadpoles. I mean, they just die very easily. You need to have an environment that tries to protect little companies and help them get bigger. Silicon Valley does that very well and America, in general, does that very well a lot of the time compared to other countries. Most other countries tend to foster and protect the big companies. Big companies don’t need protection.” – Elon Musk

“If you’re building a company, you’ve got to gather great people. I mean, all a company is is a group of people that have gathered together to create a product or service. So depending upon how talented and hardworking that group is, and to the degree in which they are focused cohesively in a good direction, that will determine the success of the company. So, do everything you can to gather great people, if you’re creating a company.” – Elon Musk

“I think it’s important to take feedback from your environment. You want to be as closed-loop as possible. If we hadn’t responded to what people said, then we probably would not have been successful. So, it’s important to look for things like that and focus on them when you see them, and you correct your prior assumptions.” – Elon Musk

“In general, people want to do the right thing and they want to do what’s good. The issue we have right now is that the rules fundamentally favor the bad outcome. When you’re fighting for the good outcome and it’s an uphill battle, it’s just slower. It’s just crazy to have the rules of the game favor a bad outcome.” – Elon Musk

“I’m not sure looking at competitors really helps. It’s sort of like the old adage with running. If you start looking at the other runners, it’s not good, you know.” – Elon Musk

“I read a lot of books and talked to lots of people. I didn’t have any one person who was a mentor, but I always looked for feedback from the people around me and feedback from the historical context, which is books, basically. I don’t read many general business books. I like to read biographies or autobiographies. I think those are pretty helpful, and a lot are not really business.” – Elon Musk

“Starting a business is not for everyone. Generally, starting a business, I’d say, No. 1 is to have a high pain threshold. When you first start a company, there’s lots of optimism and things are great. Happiness at first is high, then you encounter all sorts of issues and happiness will steadily decline, and then you will go through a whole world of hurt, and then eventually, if you succeed—and in most cases, you will not succeed—if you succeed then, after a long time, you will finally get back to happiness.” – Elon Musk

“In order to make the right decisions, you have to understand something. If you don’t understand something at a detailed level, you cannot make a decision.” – Elon Musk

“Great companies are built on great products. When the product starts to become shoddy and uncompetitive, so does the company.” – Elon Musk

“In the case of Apple, they did originally do production internally, but then along came unbelievably good outsourced manufacturing from companies like Foxconn. We don’t have that in the rocket business. There’s no Foxconn in the rocket business.” – Elon Musk

“I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy.” – Elon Musk

“Some companies out there quote a start of production that is substantially in advance of when customers get their cars.” – Elon Musk

“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.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk quotes about hard work

“Tuition costs are outrageous. Fortunately, they gave me a scholarship…so I only had to cover living expenses, books, etc., by working.” – Elon Musk

“They [Apple] have hired people we’ve fired. We always jokingly call Apple the “Tesla Graveyard.” If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding. … cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches. You can’t just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: Build me a car. But for Apple, the car is the next logical thing to finally offer a significant innovation. A new pencil or a bigger iPad alone were not relevant enough.” – Elon Musk

“Whatever you do, whatever area that you get into, even if you’re the best of the best, there’s always a chance of failure. So I think it’s important that you really like whatever you’re doing. If you don’t like it, life’s too short. If you like what you’re doing, you think about it even when you’re not working. It’s something that your mind is drawn to, and if you don’t like it, you just can’t make it work.” – Elon Musk

“If you want to grow a giant redwood, you need to make sure the seeds are OK, nurture the sapling and work out what might potentially stop it from growing all the way along. Anything that breaks it at any point stops that growth.” – Elon Musk

“Never. I don’t ever give up. I’d have to be dead or completely incapacitated.” – Elon Musk

“You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that’s wrong with it and fix it. Seek negative feedback, particularly from friends.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk quotes about SpaceX

“I’m trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.” – Elon Musk

“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

“SpaceX has the potential of saving the U.S. government $1 billion a year. We are opposed to creating an entrenched monopoly with no realistic means for anyone to compete.” – Elon Musk

“We have a strict ‘no-assholes policy’ at SpaceX.” – Elon Musk

“The pace of progress on Mars depends upon the pace of progress of SpaceX.” – Elon Musk

“I always have optimism, but I’m realistic. It was not with the expectation of great success that I started Tesla or SpaceX… It’s just that I thought they were important enough to do anyway.” – Elon Musk

“We want our leaders to find ways of motivating and inspiring their teams, reduce the noise in their work and help remove blockers. If you are a manager or leading at any level at SpaceX, we stress that your team is not there to serve you. You are there to serve your team and help them do the best possible job for the company.” – Elon Musk

“We have essentially no patents in SpaceX. Our primary long-term competition is in China. If we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese would just use them as a recipe book.” – Elon Musk

“I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.” – Elon Musk

“If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.” – Elon Musk

“If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.” – Elon Musk

“What I’m trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.” – Elon Musk

“If humanity doesn’t land on Mars in my lifetime, I would be very disappointed.” – Elon Musk

“You could warm Mars up, over time, with greenhouse gases.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk quotes about technology

“[Physics is] a good framework for thinking. … Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.” – Elon Musk

“Since our primary competitors [in space launch] are national governments, the enforceability of patents is questionable.” – Elon Musk

“Imagine creating a huge software program that can only be tested in little pieces on a computer that is slightly different from what it is supposed to run on. However, when you do run it as a whole on the actual computer for the first time, it must run almost flawlessly without a single significant bug. When is the last time you saw a software program do that?” – Elon Musk

“It is remarkable how many things you can explode. I’m lucky I have all my fingers.” – Elon Musk

“On flying cars: “I’ve thought about it quite a lot … 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.” – Elon Musk

“Hyperloop: “Short of figuring out real teleportation, which would of course be awesome (someone please do this), the only option for super-fast travel is to build a tube over or under the ground that contains a special environment.” – Elon Musk

“Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.” – Elon Musk

“A Prius is not a true hybrid, really. The current Prius is, like, 2 percent electric. It’s a gasoline car with slightly better mileage.” – Elon Musk

“If you think back to the beginning of cell phones, laptops or really any new technology, it’s always expensive.” – Elon Musk

“The U.S. automotive industry has been selling cars the same way for over 100 years, and there are many laws in place to govern exactly how that is to be accomplished.” – Elon Musk

“The factory is the machine that builds the machine.” – Elon Musk

“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.” – Elon Musk

“Facebook is quite entrenched and has a network effect. It’s hard to break into a network once it’s formed.” – Elon Musk

“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.” – Elon Musk

“The rumours of the demise of the U.S. manufacturing industry are greatly exaggerated.” – Elon Musk

“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.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk quotes about innovation

“I think the best way to attract venture capital is to try and come up with a demonstration of whatever product or service it is and ideally take that as far as you can. Just see if you can sell that to real customers and start generating some momentum. The further along you can get with that, the more likely you are to get funding.” – Elon Musk

“Disruptive technology where you really have a big technology discontinuity… tends to come from new companies.” – Elon Musk

“As much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs. MBA programs don’t teach people how to create companies.” – Elon Musk

“Don’t delude yourself into thinking something’s working when it’s not, or you’re gonna get fixated on a bad solution.” – Elon Musk

“If something has to be designed and invented, and you have to figure out how to ensure that the value of the thing you create is greater than the cost of the inputs, then that is probably my core skill.” – Elon Musk

“I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved.” – Elon Musk

“What makes innovative thinking happen?… I think it’s really a mindset. You have to decide.” – Elon Musk

I’m interested in things that change the world or that affect the future and wondrous, new technology where you see it, and you’re like, ‘Wow, how did that even happen? How is that possible?” – Elon Musk

“Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive, and determination of the people behind it as the product they sell.” – Elon Musk

“On Egyptians and aliens: Seems like an opportune moment to bring up the Fermi Paradox, aka ‘where are the aliens?’ Really odd that we see no sign of them. Btw, please don’t mention the pyramids. Stacking stone blocks is not evidence of an advanced civilization. The rumor that I’m building a spaceship to get back to my home planet Mars is totally untrue. The ancient Egyptians were amazing, but if aliens built the pyramids, they would’ve left behind a computer or something.” – Elon Musk

“I think Tesla will most likely develop its own autopilot system for the car, as I think it should be camera-based, not Lidar-based. However, it is also possible that we do something jointly with Google.” – Elon Musk

“I think long term you can see Tesla establishing factories in Europe, in other parts of the U.S. and in Asia.” – Elon Musk

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

“The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it’s the right thing to do. It’s economics 101, elementary stuff.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk quotes about leadership

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” – Elon Musk

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

“Talent is extremely important. It’s like a sports team, the team that has the best individual player will often win, but then there’s a multiplier from how those players work together and the strategy they employ.” – Elon Musk

“A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. I just happen to be the face of the companies.” – Elon Musk

“My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.” – Elon Musk

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

“I like the word ‘autopilot’ more than I like the word ‘self-driving.’ ‘Self-driving’ sounds like it’s going to do something you don’t want it to do. ‘Autopilot’ is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.” – Elon Musk

“Leaders are also expected to work harder than those who report to them and always make sure that their needs are taken care of before yours.” – Elon Musk

“We challenge our people leaders to hire people that are better than themselves, therefore making the company better with each hire.” – Elon Musk

“Make sure you understand the fundamental principles of what you’re trying to do before you get into the details.” – Elon Musk

Here in the West, people often don’t like listening to their leaders, even if they are right.” – Elon Musk

“Well, I have tried to learn as much as possible from prior attempts.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk quotes about life

“The long term ultimate objective – the holy grail – is we would like to help make life multi-planetary.” – Elon Musk

“Sooner or later, we must expand life beyond our little blue mud ball–or go extinct.” – Elon Musk

“The things that’s worth doing is trying to improve our understanding of the world and gain a better appreciation of the universe and not to worry too much about there being no meaning. And, you know, try and enjoy yourself. Because actually, life’s pretty good . It really is.” – Elon Musk

“My theory is like, you’d rather be optimistic. I think I’d rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right. Because if you’re pessimistic, it’s going to be miserable.” – Elon Musk

“Life can’t be just about solving problems. There have to be things that are exciting and inspiring that make you glad to be alive.” – Elon Musk

“I think the thing that drives me is that I want to be able to think about the future and feel good about that. So, we’re doing what we can to have the future be as good as possible, to be inspired by what is likely to happen, and to look forward to the next day. So, what really drives me is trying to figure out how to make sure that things are great, and going to be so.” – Elon Musk

“A lot of times, the question is harder than the answer. And if you can properly phrase the question, then the answer is the easy part. So, to the degree that we can better understand the universe, then we can better know what questions to ask.” – Elon Musk

“I think it would be great to be born on Earth and die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact.” – Elon Musk

“I hate writing about personal stuff. I don’t have a Facebook page. I don’t use my Twitter account. I am familiar with both, but I don’t use them.” – Elon Musk

“There are some important differences between me and Tony Stark, like I have five kids, so I spend more time going to Disneyland than parties.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk quotes about money

“We focused on signal over noise. A lot of companies get confused, they spend money on things that don’t make the product better. For example, at Tesla, we never spent any money on advertising.” – Elon Musk

“I didn’t really expect to make any money. If I could make enough to cover the rent and buy some food that would be fine. As it turns out, it turned out to be quite valuable in the end.” – Elon Musk

“So many people tried to talk me out of starting a rocket company. One good friend of mine, collected a whole series of videos of rockets blowing up, and made me watch those. He didn’t want me to lose my money.” – Elon Musk

“Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket – half a million dollars. It can be done.” – Elon Musk

“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?” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk quotes about the future

“Great companies are built on great products.” – Elon Musk

“Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.” – Elon Musk

“You want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse.”” – Elon Musk

“It would be an incredible adventure. And life needs to be more than just solving everyday problems. You need to wake up and be excited about the future.” – Elon Musk

“When thinking about starting a business, I think it’s actually better to start in a trough and come to market in a peak, than the other way around. Frankly, if anything does, and it’s almost cliché, space has a long-term future.” – Elon Musk

“I like to be involved in things that change the world. The Internet did, and space will probably be more responsible for changing the world than anything else. If humanity can expand beyond the Earth, obviously that’s where the future is.” – Elon Musk

“On why we should be nervous about the future if it turns out we’re not living in a simulation: “Arguably we should hope that that’s true, because otherwise if civilization stops advancing, that may be due to some calamitous event that erases civilization. So maybe we should be hopeful that this is a simulation, because otherwise… We are either going to create simulations indistinguishable from reality or civilization ceases to exist.” – Elon Musk

“In the distant future, people may outlaw driving cars because it’s too dangerous. You can’t have a person driving a two-ton death machine.” – Elon Musk

“You want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse.” – Elon Musk

“Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? And if the future’s not including being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, it’s incredibly depressing if that’s not the future we’re going to have.” – Elon Musk

“Don’t delude yourself into thinking something’s working when it’s not, or you’re gonna get fixated on a bad solution.” – Elon Musk

“I would say try to learn as much as possible that allows you to predict the future or make the future. So the saying is that the best way to predict the future is to make it. And then assess whether what you’re learning is enabling you to predict the future with less error.” – Elon Musk

“If you had to buy a new plane every time you flew somewhere, it would be incredibly expensive.” – Elon Musk

“The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.” – Elon Musk

“I’m reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States – for the century, at least.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk quotes on artificial intelligence

“AI is much more advanced than people realize. … Humanity’s position on this planet depends on its intelligence so if our intelligence is exceeded, it’s unlikely that we will remain in charge of the planet.” – Elon Musk

“The least scary future I can think of is one where we have at least democratized AI…[also] when there’s an evil dictator, that human is going to die. But for an AI, there would be no death. It would live forever. And then you’d have an immortal dictator from which we can never escape.” – Elon Musk

“If AI has a goal and humanity just happens to be in the way, it will destroy humanity as a matter of course without even thinking about it…It’s just like, if we’re building a road and an anthill just happens to be in the way, we don’t hate ants, we’re just building a road.” – Elon Musk

“China, Russia, soon all countries w[ith] strong computer science. Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3.” – Elon Musk

“If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk(y) than North Korea.” – Elon Musk

“Mark my words, AI is far more dangerous than nukes…why do we have no regulatory oversight?” – Elon Musk

“AI is a rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation than be reactive.” – Elon Musk

“I am not normally an advocate of regulation and oversight…I think one should generally err on the side of minimizing those things…but this is a case where you have a very serious danger to the public.” – Elon Musk

‘The biggest issue I see with so-called AI experts is that they think they know more than they do, and they think they are smarter than they actually are…This tends to plague smart people. They define themselves by their intelligence and they don’t like the idea that a machine could be way smarter than them, so they discount the idea — which is fundamentally flawed.” – Elon Musk

“Robots will be able to do everything better than us…I am not sure exactly what to do about this. This is really the scariest problem to me.” – Elon Musk

“I have exposure to the most cutting edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned by it…AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization in a way that car accidents, airplane crashes, faulty drugs or bad food were not — they were harmful to a set of individuals within society, of course, but they were not harmful to society as a whole.” – Elon Musk

“AI will be the best or worst thing ever for humanity.” – Elon Musk

“[Governments] don’t need to follow normal laws. They will obtain AI developed by companies at gunpoint, if necessary.” – Elon Musk

“On whether humans exist in another civilization’s video game: “I’ve had so many simulation discussions it’s crazy. In fact, it got to the point where basically every conversation was the AI-slash-simulation conversation, and my brother and I finally agreed that we’d ban any such conversations if we’re ever in a hot tub. Because that really kills the magic.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk Quotes about impacting the world

“We need to figure out how to have the things we love, and not destroy the world.” – Elon Musk

“The heroes of the books I read, The Lord of the Rings and the Foundation series, always felt a duty to save the world.” – Elon Musk

“One was the Internet, one was clean energy and one was space.” – Elon Musk

“This is the chance to fulfill a dream.” – Elon Musk

“On how to warm Mars up to make it hospitable for humans: “The fast way is to drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles.” – Elon Musk

“When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world. Now I am.” – Elon Musk

“My motivation for all my companies has been to be involved in something that I thought would have a significant impact on the world.”” – Elon Musk

“I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems… It’s got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.” – Elon Musk

“The idea of lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. It sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I’d be super-duper bored. I like high intensity.” – Elon Musk

“Humanity can address a lot of the suffering that occurs in the world and make things a lot better. I think a lot of times people are quite sort of negative about the present and about the future, but really, if you are a student of history, when else would you really want to be alive? Now is the best time, pretty much. Those who think the past is better have not read enough history.” – Elon Musk

“The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.” – Elon Musk

“I’m a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.” – Elon Musk

“It is theoretically possible to warp spacetime itself, so you’re not actually moving faster than the speed of light, but it’s actually space that’s moving.” – Elon Musk

“If we’re going to have any chance of sending stuff to other star systems, we need to be laser-focused on becoming a multi-planet civilisation.” – Elon Musk

“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.” – Elon Musk

“As you heat the planet up, it’s just like boiling a pot.” – Elon Musk

“America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.” – Elon Musk

“Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It’s really counterintuitive.” – Elon Musk

“Trying to read our DNA is like trying to understand software code – with only 90% of the code riddled with errors. It’s very difficult in that case to understand and predict what that software code is going to do.” – Elon Musk

Famous Elon Musk quotes

“[As a child] I would just question things…” – 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.” – Elon Musk

“You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be… better.” – Elon Musk

“You have to say, ‘Well, why did it succeed where others did not?” – Elon Musk

“Don’t be afraid of new arenas.” – Elon Musk

“If nothing else, we are committed to failing in a new way.” – Elon Musk

“I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.” – Elon Musk

“You have to be pretty driven to make it happen. Otherwise, you will just make yourself miserable.” – Elon Musk

“Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.” – Elon Musk

“I came to the conclusion that we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.” – Elon Musk

“Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is a disaster.” – Elon Musk

FAQs | Motivational Elon Musk quotes

Here are some frequently asked questions about Elon Musk quotes.

Who is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk is a South African-born American engineer, industrial designer, technology entrepreneur, and philanthropist. Elon is a co-founder of the electronic-payment form Paypal and a founder, CEO, CTO, and chief designer of SpaceX. He is also the found of Tesla.

What is Elon Musk famous for?

Elon Musk is famous for being an entrepreneur and business magnate known for his involvement in various ventures such as Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.

Final thoughts on Elon Musk quotes

I hope you enjoyed this epic list of the best inspirational Elon Musk quotes.

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