62 Elon Musk Quotes

Innovation, determination, and groundbreaking ideas are essential to success. These three qualities define the life and work of the most visionary entrepreneur of our times, Elon Musk. As the co-founder and CEO of SpaceX, Tesla Motors, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and many other revolutionary ventures, Musk’s charisma and brilliant mind have set him apart from the crowd. But behind his astonishing achievements, his success also comes from his endless source of motivation and inspiration. The billionaire genius is always dropping advice on business and tech, with an endless stream of Elon Musk quotes continuing to flood social media.

And while he has often provided great advice with his musings, Musk is also known for saying whatever he wants, especially on Twitter, where a single tweet from Musk can cause all sorts of controversy. Does anyone remember his last appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast? Having recently challenged fellow billionaire Mark Zuckerberg to a cage fight and seen the launch of SpaceX’s Starship end in an exploding rocket, Musk continues to be in the news, but not for the right reasons.

In this article, we embark on a journey to explore the compelling world of Elon Musk’s quotes. We will dive deep into the profound thoughts that have inspired and entertained millions. From moments of audacious wit and introspective reflections to wild statements and humorous one-liners, his words paint a vivid picture of a man driven by an unwavering desire to revolutionize industries and, ultimately, the world itself. As well as his ego.

So, join us as we unlock the mind of a visionary, sifting through the tapestry of Elon Musk’s words to discover the secrets of his success, the wisdom within his challenges, and the inspiration that propels him forward. Brace yourself for a remarkable journey that will inspire, motivate, and challenge you to envision a world where anything is possible.

30 Weird and Wonderful Elon Musk Quotes

1. “Never. I don’t ever give up. I’d have to be dead or completely incapacitated. For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never.”
2. “The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication.”
3. “I love the thought of a car drifting apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future.”
4. “The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.”
5. “A source of strength, hm. That’s really not how I think about things. For me it’s simply: This is something that is important to get done, and we should just keep doing it or die trying. I don’t need a source of strength. [Quitting] is not in my nature, and I don’t care about optimism or pessimism. F*ck that, we’re gonna get it done.”
6. “Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.”
7. “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.”
8. “To make an embarrassing admission, I like video games. That’s what got me into software engineering when I was a kid. I wanted to make money so I could buy a better computer to play better video games. Nothing like saving the world.”
9. “You guys are the magicians of the 21st century. Don’t let anything hold you back. Imagination is the limit. Go out there and create some magic.”
10. “I remember the early meetings with Gates. His understanding of AI was limited. Still is.” – Elon Musk discussing the thoughts of Bill Gates on AI
11. “Take risks now. Do something bold. You won’t regret it.”
12. “If something is important enough, even if the odds are stacked against you, you should still do it.”
13. “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.”
14. “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.”
15. “When I was a little kid, I was really scared of the dark. But then I came to understand, okay, 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.”
16. “That’s my lesson for taking a vacation: Vacations will kill you.” – After almost dying from a misdiagnosed type of malaria, which he acquired on his first vacation, a trip to Africa, in years
17. “Ancient Greece had it all & then committed suicide. Nobody digs your grave better than yourself.”
18. “It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”
19. “Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.”
20. “I think it’s very difficult to start companies and quite painful. There’s a friend of mine who’s got a good phrase for doing a startup: ‘It’s like eating glass and staring into the abyss.’ If you’re sort of wired to do it, then you should do it, but not otherwise. If you need inspiring words, don’t do it.”
21. “Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we’re going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work.”
22. “The key to making things affordable is design and technology improvements as well as scale.”
23. “If somebody is doing something that is useful to the rest of society, I think that’s a good thing. It doesn’t have to change the world. If you make something that has high value to people, and frankly even if it’s a little game or, you know, some improvement in photo-sharing — if it has a small amount of good for a large number of people, I think that’s fine. Having something that makes a big difference but affects a small to moderate number of people is great, as is something that makes an even smaller difference but affects a vast number of people. Stuff doesn’t need to change the world to be good.”
24. “If there’s ever a scandal about me, please call it Elongate.”
25. “Every 5000th buyer of our boringly boring hat will get a free hat signed by the delivery guy.”
26. “You could power the entire United States with about 150 to 200 square kilometers of solar panels, the entire United States. Take a corner of Utah… there’s not much going on there, I’ve been there. There’s not even radio stations.”
27. “Nobody wants to buy a $60,000 electric Civic, but people will pay $90,000 for an electric sports car.”
28. “I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.”
29. “Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.”
30. “Starting a business is not for everyone. Starting a business—I’d say, number one is have a high pain threshold.”
31. “I think that’s the single best piece of advice: Constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”
32. People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.
33. “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.”
34. “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.”
35. “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.”
36. “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.”
37. “I’m personally a moderate and a registered independent, so I’m not strongly Democratic or strongly Republican.”
38. “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.”
39. “A good sign as to whether there’s free speech is: Is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like? If that is the case, then we have free speech. And it’s damn annoying when someone you don’t like says something you don’t like. [But] that is a sign of a healthy, functioning, free speech situation.”
40. “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.”
41. “We have a strict ‘no asshole policy’ at SpaceX. And we fire people that are. I mean, we give them a little bit of warning. But if they continue to be an a-hole, then they’re fired.”
42. “I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”
43. “I would like to die on Mars—just not on impact.”
44. “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.”
45. “We’re driving up Sand Hill Road, and Peter says: ‘So, what can this do?’ And then, probably number one on the list of famous last words, I said: ‘Watch this.’” – On wrecking his McLaren F1 with Peter Thiel in the passenger seat
46. 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.
47. “I’m actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger’s to host SNL. Or at least the first to admit it. So I won’t make a lot of eye contact with the cast tonight. But don’t worry, I’m pretty good at running human and emulation mode.”
48. “Entrepreneurship is like eating glass and walking on hot coals at the same time.”
49. “Next I’m buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in.” – After his acquisition of Twitter to prioritize free speech on the platform again
50. “I put the art in fart.”
51. “To our knowledge, life exists on only one planet, Earth. If something bad happens, it’s gone. I think we should establish life on another planet—Mars in particular—but we’re not making very good progress. SpaceX is intended to make that happen.”
52. “Technically, alcohol is a solution.”
53. “I just want to retire before I go senile because if I don’t retire before I go senile, then I’ll do more damage than good at that point.”
54. “We are the first species capable of self-annihilation.”
55. “There’s nothing—I’ve bought everything I want. I don’t like yachts or anything; you know, I’m not a yacht person, and I’ve got pretty much the nicest plane I’d want to have.”
56. “I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.”
57. “Ultimately, the downfall of the Freemasons was giving away their stonecutting services for nothing.”
58. “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.”
59. “I’d rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.”
60. “Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.”
61. “I would only call someone an idiot if people were mistakenly under the impression that the person was smart.”
62. “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.”