“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.

Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.

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

What is simple in one arena is often profound in another.

Innovation comes in many ways.

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

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

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

Run a physics sim long enough & you’ll get intelligence.

The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn’t even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we’d never have had the light bulb.

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

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.

I started SpaceX with the expectation of failure.

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

Getting there was super hard. Very proud of Tesla team!

Great companies are built on great products.

CEOs of large corporations earn 400 times what their workers make. That is not what America is supposed to be about.

You want a CEO that understands they need to build a team around them that’s sharper and smarter than they are.

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.