Elon Musk is hands down one of the most influential people to walk the Earth.
Below, you’ll find a list of 38 of the Most Influential Quotes by none other than the genius known as 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.”
- “You want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse.”
- “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.”
- “My motivation for all my companies has been to be involved in something that I thought would have a significant impact on the world.”
- “If humanity doesn’t land on Mars in my lifetime, I would be very disappointed.”
- “Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.”
- “The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.”
- “I want to be able to think about the future and feel good about that — that 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.”
- “Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.”
- “Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.”
- “If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.”
- “You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be… better.”
- “I always invest my own money in the companies that I create.”
- “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”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “There’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.”
- “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.”
- “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor”
- “It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”
- “I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”
- “We’re going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work.”
- “You have to say, ‘Well, why did it succeed where others did not?'”
- “Disruptive technology where you really have a big technology discontinuity… tends to come from new companies.”
- “Don’t delude yourself into thinking something’s working when it’s not, or you’re gonna get fixated on a bad solution.”
- “I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.”
- “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.”
- “I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.”
- “I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.”
- “Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.”
- “Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.”
- “I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.”
- “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.”
- “If something is important enough you should try. Even if the probable outcome is failure.”
- “There’s a silly notion that failure is not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”
- “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.”
- “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 don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.”
