“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.”

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

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.

Tesla is here to stay and keep fighting for the electric car revolution.

You could warm Mars up, over time, with greenhouse gases.

Engineering is the closest thing to magic that exists in the world.

Mars is to Earth, as Terminus was to Trantor.

Weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

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.

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.

Humans need to be a multiplanet species.

With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.

If something’s important enough, you should try. Even if you – the probable outcome is failure.

Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.

Fear is a hard thing to deal with. I feel it quite strongly. If I think something is important enough, I’ll make myself do it in spite of fear. But it can really sap the will. I hate fear, I wish I had it less.

For me it was never about money, but solving problems for the future of humanity.

Mars is the only place in the solar system where it’s possible for life to become multi-planetarian.

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.