101 Elon Musk Quotes That Will Inspire Your Business Success

More than a magnate, an innovator, a leader, and some say out-of-this-world person, Elon Musk has a lot to teach, and this is the reason he has outstanding entrepreneurial life. Here we list 101 of the most famous Elon Musk quotes that may change your perception about business and life.

Elon Musk is one of the greatest innovators and entrepreneurs in the world. Born in 1971 to a Canadian mother and a South African father, he spent his childhood in Pretoria, South Africa, before moving to Canada to attend Queens University before transferring to the University of California two years later.

While at the university, he had a massive passion for software engineering, and that is how he founded x.com, which was bought by eBay and renamed PayPal.

He would later start two companies Space X and Tesla, which have put him on the world map as the richest man in the world, and the first person in history to have a personal fortune of more than 300 billion dollars.

As we see, not only his leadership skills are to be learned, but also his willingness to innovate and take risks, his capacity to bring ideas to life like a few in the business world, and his personal marketing skills that keep him as one of the most admired businesses men in history.

Let’s learn a little bit with these brilliant entrepreneur words. Here are the top Elon Musk quotes.

Table of Contents

1) Elon Musk Quotes on Success

• Persistence
• Risk-Taking
• Self-improvement

2) Elon Musk Quotes on Management

• Business Management
• Change Management

3) Elon Musk Quotes on Talents

4) Elon Musk Quotes on Innovation

• New Products and Technologies
• Creation and Creativity
• Entrepreneurship
• Elon Musk Starting His First Company

5) Elon Musk Quotes About The Future

1) Elon Musk Quotes on Success

Persistence

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.

Elon Musk had a great passion for computers and entrepreneurship right from childhood. He felt that the internet had greater potential to impact the world and eventually dropped out of Stanford University two days after enrolling for his Ph.D. in energy Physics when he decided to follow his passion. After that, he has achieved huge accomplishments in the entrepreneurial and technological world.

The next quote is one of the most inspiring Elon Musk quotes where he shows resilience and persistence at the edge of his physical conditions.

No, I don’t ever give up. I’d have to be dead or completely incapacitated.

In his Twitter account in May 2018, Elon Musk responded to a follower who wanted to know what would make the Tesla boss give up.

Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.

It is possible to admire the huge successes accomplished by Elon Musk. Looking beyond these successes, however, shows his persistence and unwillingness to give up. His rejection never brought him down by Netscape not hiring him or PayPal’s rating as the worst business concept of the year, and he rather learned from his mistakes and worked past them to achieve his current successes.

The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.

There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week.

When a user asked him on Twitter about the number of hours a person needs to work each week to “change the world,” Musk said around 80 to over 100: “Varies per person, but about 80 sustained, peaking above 100 at times. Pain level increases exponentially above 80.” This is one of the most memorable Elon Musk quotes.

In a continuation, he completed:

The company was bleeding money like crazy, and if we didn’t solve these problems in a very short period of time, we would die.

Musk has been known to sometimes sleep at the factory.

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

Elon Musk has invested in a range of projects which have turned out successful. Despite most of his projects’ challenges, such as PayPal, he believed in success and went for it. His rejection by several companies did not also deter him from accomplishing his goals.

You must be willing to lose it all, but be willing to keep going into the future.

Risk-Taking

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

At an interview with Wired magazine back in 2012. He talked about the space exploration goals, and he mentioned the “pretty silly things” that happen in the aerospace industry, like using legacy rocket technology from the 1960s.

In most cases, using legacy technology is a way to avoid taking risks.

Failure is a good option. If you are not failing, you are not trying hard enough.

Behind his numerous accomplishments, Elon Musk encountered failure severally before succeeding in the end. Some of his biggest failures include rejection by Netscape, PayPal being voted the worst business concept of the year, and Tesla failing in its initial stages before succeeding. Despite all the failures he encountered, he did not give up but kept trying until he succeeded.

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.

Musk has invested his net worth into his startups since the beginning. He changed his way of doing so after Zip2 and PayPal. After introducing an external venture capital, he has his shared diluted, driven away as a CEO from Zip. Since then, he has been more restrictive in adding external capital.

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.

I messed up the first three launches. The first three launches failed. And fortunately, the fourth launch — which was, that was the last money that we had for Falcon 1 — that fourth launch worked. Or it would have been — that would have been it for SpaceX. But fate liked us that day. So, the fourth launch worked.

Elon Musk remembers failing in the first three launches of Space X. He said during the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) conference in Adelaide, Australia, in 2017.

Entrepreneurship is more like eating glass while staring at the abyss of death.

After Tesla IPO, in his first public appearance, Musk said that one of the worst times of his life happened in December 2008 when he was divorcing when SpaceX’s launch failed, and Tesla’s funding unsucceeded. He reminded the audience that even remarkable entrepreneurs can still struggle, and this is probably one of the most comprehended Elon Musk quotes by entrepreneurs.

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.

Musk himself failed several times. When Zip2 got investors on board, Musk wanted to have the CEO position, but instead, they made him the company’s chief technology officer.

Another example, with Space x, in the attempt to land rockets, he had several failures from January 2015 until April 2016, when he finally had three consecutive successful landings.

Self-improvement

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.

During a TED talk interview in 2017 with TED’s Head Curator Chris Anderson, Elon Musk talks about his project digging tunnels under LA, the latest from Tesla and SpaceX, and his motivation for building a future on Mars in conversation.

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.

Pay attention to negative feedback, and solicit it, particularly from friends.

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

In an interview with Jim Clash, from the website askman.com, Elon Musk answered the question, “So good advice is to embrace what really interests you?”.

He continued giving an example, embarrassing in his opinion. He likes video games, which got him into software engineering when he was a kid, to make money to buy a better computer to play. Mentioning that this does not contribute to the world, he moved to other engineering works that could contribute.

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 has always loved computers and entrepreneurship since childhood. He constantly searched for any opportunities that allowed him to pursue his dreams and build and sell a computer game at 12. Computers and entrepreneurship were his greatest motivators that kept him going regardless of all challenges he faced.

As a child, I hated being alone. As an adult, I don’t want to be alone. It makes one really miserable.

In an interview for Rolling Stone with the reporter and bestselling author Neil Strauss, Elon Musk disclosed that he felt miserable and lonely after the breakup with his girlfriend, Amber Heard. His money, fame, and accomplishments did not shield him from the human feeling of loneliness and severe pain after the breakup.

I would tell those people they will get to see their families a lot when we go bankrupt.

A former employee, Ryan Popple, disclosed this quote, remembering Musk’s answer to an employee when he complained about working too hard.

During a conversation that Elon Musk had in a keynote on the South By Southwest in 2013, when he shared some moments he spends with his family, Chris Anderson, the interviewer mentions that Musk manages his companies while being a father to five children.

He responds to the audience that everyone should have kids because they are great. However, he mentions he doesn’t see his kids enough but can be with them while on e-mail since they don’t need a lot of interaction. This was a sad moment in the interview but showed some perspective of the magnate towards family.

That’s my lesson for taking a vacation. Vacation will kill you.

As a workaholic, Musk confirmed he doesn’t take a week off. In 2015 he mentioned, “In the last 12 years, I only tried to take a week off twice”.

He had traumatic experiences with vacation, and perhaps his worst experience happened with his wife Justine on a second honeymoon in December 2000.

They planned a trip to Brazil and South Africa, but while in South Africa, Musk contracted malaria and came very close to dying. After healded, he said this famous quote.

2) Elon Musk Quotes on Management

Business Management

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

This quote is more learning for new entrepreneurs. We know the key element of investing is diversification, which means spreading your money into various types of investments, companies, industries, and countries. In this quote, Musk implies that, if you can do that, at least control well your only investment.

If you’re 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.

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

I’ve actually not read any books on time management.

In an interview with Y Combinator president Sam Altman, Elon Musk reveals he spends 80% of his time engineering and design.

Musk does not exercise the usual time management methods to maintain his tight schedule, and he doesn’t use a special app to monitor his digital activities. He tends to let it goes with the flow, learning as he works.

When he is asked about productivity improvement, he says this next quote:

I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

Whenever there’s something that affects the public good, then there does need to be some form of public oversight.

This quote came as an answer to the question from the “CBS This Morning” co-host Gayle King in April 2018 “Do you think now is the time for regulations in Silicon Valley?”.

Musk continues, “I do think there should be some regulations on AI. I think there should be regulations on social media to the degree that it negatively affects the public good”.

Besides being a significant project to humanity, artificial intelligence is one of the most dangerous projects in existence. Elon Musk, however, insists that all innovators, including himself, should pay attention to social risk to minimize the dangers of their projects.

In the same conversation, he came with this next quote:

We can’t have like willy-nilly proliferation of fake news, that’s crazy. You can’t have more types of fake news than real news. That’s allowing public deception to go unchecked. That’s crazy.

I tried hard not to be the CEO at Tesla, but I had to or it would die.

Although he mentions the company won’t survive without him, success and going concern are some critical issues that Elon has been vocal about. Musk has mentioned leaving the command of Tesla for years, and in July 2021, he testified in court about the SolarCity deal, and he used the quote above.

Change Management

Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.

In his interview with The Daily Beast, he said, “Tesla is obviously a small company, so to have a significant effect on the world, we have to inspire others to create compelling electric cars to the degree that we can help others; create electric cars.”

In this interview, he was talking about the competition with the huge GM and Nissan. He mentioned Tesla inspired the two other companies on electric cars, and his quote is obviously related to this type of competition. If Tesla were not able to change and innovate, the consequence would be a disaster for them,

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

Although Musk really believes that, in November 2021, he had to sell at least $10 billion of stock to pay a huge tax bill due in the summer of the same year.

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.

This quote connects with another quote from Musk:

Don’t tell me what you like, tell me what you don’t like.

Musk considered in an interview a few years ago the single most important piece of advice for entrepreneurs.

3) Elon Musk Quotes on Talents

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

Elon Musk was born as an ordinary boy in Pretoria, South Africa. He, however, made extraordinary decisions such as not joining hands with apartheid and leaving for Canada. Despite completing his undergraduate studies in Physics and enrolling for his Ph.D. in the same field, he dropped out to follow his passion for computers. It is these major decisions that made him the extraordinary person he is today. “So I improved my skills as a writer and coach with a goal of never-stopping, and I succeeded in making an excellent living doing what I loved most”, said 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.

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.

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.

SpaceX culture is very similar to a dot com and does not feel like a big operation. Inside the factory, you find all the stuff you would see on a Silicon Valley startup. Musk has an open cubicle equal to other employees, who wear casual T-shirts and travel around on tricycles. The office space is open.

Until recently, Musk was personally involved in every single appointment as he believes in the “all in it together” work culture. That way, he thinks everyone should be don’t the same page for the company goals.

I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.

Goal timelines do not usually go as planned as they should, and it wouldn’t be different with Musk. Tesla plans to start shipping the Roadster was in 2006, but the car became available in 2008. Even late, Tesla delivered the first fully battery-powered electric car.

The biggest mistake, in general, I’ve made, is to put too much of a weighting on someone’s talent and not enough on their personality. And I’ve made that mistake several times. I think it actually matters whether somebody has a good heart, it really does. I’ve made the mistake of thinking that it’s sometimes just about the brain.

Years ago, at an SXSW conference, a question came from the audience about “the biggest mistake” of Elon Musk’s life. After a pause, he answered the quote above.

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.

Generally, I look for a positive attitude and are they easy to work with, are people gonna like working with them? It’s very important to like the people you work with, otherwise life [and] your job is gonna be quite miserable. And, in fact, we have a strict no a–holes policy at SpaceX. And we fire people if they are. I mean, we give them a little bit of warning. But if they continue to be an a–hole, then they’re fired.

In a 2008 interview on Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation, Barry Hurd asked Musk, “What do you look for in someone?” and Musk replied the quote above.

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

A tweet was posted on @teslaownersSV featuring a quote under the name of Elon Musk. Elon Musk has denied that he did not say the quote. And the tweet was deleted.

4) Elon Musk Quotes on Innovation

New Products and Technologies

They were building a Ferrari for every launch, when it was possible that a Honda Accord might do the trick.

Before Musk started SpaceX, he realized that rockets were expensive because the industry had not evolved for over 50 years. Since aerospace companies had no competition, they built expensive rockets instead of functional ones that served the purpose. That’s when he made the comparison between Ferraris and Hondas in this memorable quote.

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.

There are two things required when launching new affordable technology. The first is economies of scale, and the other is the need to design and iterate things. Sometimes, you might be forced to change the version a few times.

Disruptive technology where you really have a big technology discontinuity… tends to come from new companies.

Is Tesla Really a Disruptor? This was the question answered by an article in Harvard Business Review in August 2017. According to the article, Tesla doesn’t qualify for the traditional definition of disruptive.

The article continues that the model defined by Clayton Christensen, tesla would need to offer substitute products using a more affordable technology, initially inferior, to products offered by currently available products, improving over time and making the industry either unaware or unable to adapt.

Honestly, this theory is just a book theory, far from reality. Just see Tesla’s market cap of over 1 trillion, joining a select group of four companies in October 2021, together with Google, Amazon, and Facebook.

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

In 2017 in an interview with ycombinator.com, Ellon answered one question “If you were 22 today, what would the five problems that you would think about working on?” and “what did you do when you were younger that you think sort of set you up to have a big impact?”

In his answer, he related that you actually don’t need to change the world to do something nice, but if you’re making a small improvement to society, this is already good. He then said, in 95, he decided not to do his Ph.D. at Stanford and watch Internet technology happen.

We just need to catch an extremely tiny amount of it (The Sun) to power all of civilization.

In a Tweet about solar energy, Musk said these words that were actually confirmed by the University of Tennessee agriculture school confirms: “If all the sunlight energy striking the Earth’s surface in Texas alone could be converted to electricity, it would be up to 300 times the total power output of all the power plants in the world!”

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.

During an interview with the Silicon Valley Business Journal in December 2010, Ellon Musk talked about the Apple brand and its quality compared to competitors. He was asked: “So you buy the brand?”. The answer came to be one of the most famous Elon Musk quotes.

Creation and Creativity

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.

Musk said this remarkable quote in 2012 in an interview with Wired. Musk was saying that there is not much differentiation possible in his rockets, and the only one would be the cost. Then the interviewer Chris Anderson, asked, “So—how do you do it? What’s your process?” and that’s when one of the most known, Elon Musk’s quotes, was verbalized.

There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week.

In a Twitter thread, Musk revealed some of shi impressions about work and changing the world.

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

Starting & growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people as the product they sell.

I think if you’re going to choose a place to die, then Mars is probably not a bad choice.

Did Shakespeare go to college? Probably not.

At the Satellite 2020 conference in Washington DC, someone from the audience told Musk many SpaceX jobs require a bachelor’s but preferrable a master’s degree even though Musk has been vocal about not needing a degree.

His answer was the quote below:

I think college is basically for fun and to prove that you can do your chores, but they’re not for learning.

And continued:

I don’t consider going to college evidence of exceptional ability. In fact, ideally you dropped out.

He listed a few geniuses that have done so: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellison. And he mentioned Shakespeare in the quote above.

You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be… better.

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.

Tesla cars are among the most efficient cars in existence. Tesla and his team created cars that consume lower energy to make them available for the average income population.

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 built PayPal and SpaceX and currently runs one of the world’s most disruptive companies, Tesla. He has numerous accomplishments and is less than 50, and we should definitely grab his piece of advice.

You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.

This is one of the most famous Elon Musk quotes which came in a 2014 interview. This quote basically implies that if you’re striving to be less wrong, you will consider all knowledge, experience, and learnings to reduce the risks and improve your approach.

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

Entrepreneurship

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.

I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.

During an interview with aeon.co in 2014, Musk has said the Mars colonization as extinction insurance. Although he believes ‘Not everyone loves humanity, and people say things like “Nature is so wonderful; things are always better in the countryside where there are no people around.”, he still thinks we have a duty to keep consciousness.

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.

This Elon Musk quote represents a key element for someone who had SpaceX technologies got $1 Billon by Google and Fidelity Investments in 2015 and 2021 got $1.2 Billon more with a valuation of $74 billion.

I think that there might be too many MBAs running companies.

According to CNBC, Musk said in December 2020:

This MBAization of America isn’t great.

Musk was referring to product innovation. According to the magnate, CEOs think about numbers and forget about their mission to create “awesome” products or services.

In the same conversation comes another Elon Musk quote:

There should be more focus on the product or service itself, less time on board meetings, less time on financials.

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

This usually happens when entrepreneurs are passionate about their ideas. They don’t test their idea to protect what they think it’s unique, and they are so deluded with it that they don’t even see if there are better solutions on the market and end up launching.

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.

With all the challenges associated with startups, Elon Musk, like any other entrepreneur, has no guarantee for success. He, however, showed several times optimism predicting his projects would become profitable in the end. And they indeed became.

When my brother and I were starting our first company, instead of getting an apartment, we just rented a small office and we slept on the couch.

This Elon Musk quote inspired aspiring entrepreneurs at the University of Southern California during the 2014 commencement speech.

It’s not as if there is a pile of cash somewhere. It’s really just that I have a certain number of votes in Tesla, and SpaceX, and SolarCity, and the marketplace has value on those votes.

When interviewed by Justin Rowlatt, BBC, in 2014, Elon Musk said he didn’t know how rich he was. Money is not what drives him, and it looks like the approach has been working well for Musk. Tesla’s market cap is more than $1 trillion, more than the following big companies together: Ford (78.926 B), General Motors (87.358 B), BMW($62.42 B), Volkswagen ($123.09 B), Fiat Chrysler ($30.91 B), and Ferrari ($64.62 B).

Starting and growing a company is more about building a determined team than creating products or services.

The success of any company, whether experienced or seasoned, depends on the team’s dedication rather than the idea, products, or services. Such teams are what pushed SpaceX and Tesla into success. Elon Musk emphasizes, in this quote, the necessity of having determined people around to be successful.

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

This is one of the most repeated Elon Musk quotes. It was said when Musk held a roundtable session at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London in November 2012.

This quote came when one of the audience members asked, how could we get more Elon Musks and if the entrepreneurial mindset and skills were transferable.

He started answering:

I read a lot of Science Fiction as a kid and tried to think about the future and the problems that needed to be solved to make it a bright future, and I tried to get involved in that.

And he continued with the memorable quote about getting things done.

Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.

As a public company, we are subject to wild swings in our stock price that can be a major distraction for everyone working at Tesla.

This say was found on Tesla’s blog from August 7, 2018. Tesla is currently a public company, and according to Musk, this makes the company think about the next quarter much more than it should instead of being focused on the next years of innovation.

The stock market is a strange thing. It’s like having a manic depressive who’s constantly telling you how much your company’s worth. And sometimes they have a good day, and sometimes they have a bad day, but the company is basically the same. The public markets are crazy.

Elon Musk said in an interview with Business Insider in December 2020 about the nature of stock markets weeks before becoming the richest person on the planet.

Elon Musk Starting His First Company

In ’95 I kinda thought the Internet would be something that would change the world in a major way and I wanted to be a part of it.

Musk was trying to get into some Internet business in 1995, so he applied to a Netscape job position this year.

I actually tried hanging out in the [Netscape] lobby, but I was too shy to talk to anyone. So I’m just like standing in the lobby.

Musk was so shy and afraid that he couldn’t talk to anyone at the Netscape lobby, so he left. Since he couldn’t;t be hired at Netscape, he decided to open his own Internet company and launched Zip2.

Like any other company, Tesla has gown through several setbacks to reach its current position. The company, however, boasts of a solid support such as Adam Jonas, who kept it going in the toughest times.

My proceeds from PayPal were $180M. I put $100M in SpaceX, $70M in Tesla, and $10M in SolarCity. I had to borrow money for rent.

Whatever the thing is you’re trying to create, [ask] what would be the utility delta compared to the current state of the art, times how many people it would affect? So that’s why I think something that makes a big difference, but affects a small to moderate number of people is great, as is something that makes a small difference but affects a vast number of people. The area under the curve would be roughly similar for those two things. So it’s really about trying to be useful.

Said Musk during an interview with YCombinator in September 2016.

5) Elon Musk Quotes About The Future

Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.

Musk told an audience at the World Government Summit in Dubai, where he also launched Tesla in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

And he continued:

It’s mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output.

Elon Musk is working on a chip, also referred to as the Link, initially introduced on a person’s brain. Besides helping major spine injuries of paraplegic individuals, it will also store memory.

In his own words:

The future will be weird.

The thing that drives me is that I want to be able to think about the future and feel good about that.

Said Musk in July 2017 when speaking to the National Governors Association in July 2017.

Your Will is the most accurate way to predict the Future.

In September 2019, Elon Musk and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma debated, at World AI Conference in Shanghai, artificial intelligence and its implications for humanity. In this convention, you can say Musk implicitly explained his own quote by stating: “Zero percent of the predictions are right, and they’re right but by accident.”

A similar quote comes from Abraham Lincoln: “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”

Real issue will an aging & declining world population by 2050, not overpopulation.

In a Tweet, Elon Musk changed his mind about overpopulation. He stated a Tweet in 2017 when he said: “The world’s population is accelerating towards collapse, but few seem to notice or care.”

All orgs developing advanced AI should be regulated, including Tesla.

AI may seem all glittery, but it has its risks as well. Elon Musk thus states in a tweet responding to MIT publication that AI needs to be regulated, possibly to minimize the dangers involved.

I would like to die thinking that humanity has a bright future. If we can solve sustainable energy and be well on our way to becoming a multiplanetary species with a self-sustaining civilization on another planet… I think that would be really good.

Elon Musk cares very much about leaving a bright future for humanity, and it’s a personal goal.

It seems weird for a common person to think that a single human being is willing, and maybe the power, to save our species. However, when it comes to Musk, you may consider living on Mars is really possible.

I take the position that I’m always to some degree wrong, and the aspiration is to be less wrong.

What we are aspiring to do is to help make humanity a true space-faring civilization and ultimately become a multi-planet species.

In an interview with Kai Ryssdal from marketplace.org, Elon Musk states that quote, and he also says the fundamental problem of spacecraft and rockets is the price, and it needs to be reduced substantially.

In the same interview, he talks about the excitement about future exploring other places other than the earth:

…If you think about and sort of look ahead and see about a future where we’re out there exploring the stars and understanding the universe and the kind of things that you see in science fiction books and movies and reading books; that’s an exciting future and much more exciting than one where we’re just forever confined to Earth until our eventual extinction.

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.

I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.

I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.

You could basically store your memories as a backup and restore the memories. Then ultimately, you could potentially download them into a new body or into a robot body.

We’re headed toward a situation where AI is vastly smarter than humans.

Said Elon Musk to the New York Times in July 2020. He is concerned that in five years, this may happen, and people will lose their jobs depending on the government. For example, self-driving cars, where many drivers won’t be necessary anymore.

Wrapping up

After seeing so many Elon Musk quotes, some inspirational, other educational, you may now have an understanding of the reason an entrepreneur like him, at such a young age, was so fearless of taking risks and becoming such a successful person.

Knowing Elon Musk quotes is an excellent start to understand the mind of a genius and learn a few lessons from it. I hope you enjoyed it!