“You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that’s wrong with it and fix it.”

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

Innovation comes in many ways.

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.

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.

Don’t be afraid of new arenas.

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

The best plan is to profit by the folly of others.

Luxury goods are the only area in which it is possible to make luxury margins.

The great business of man is to improve his mind, and govern his manners; all other projects and pursuits, whether in our power to compass or not, are only amusements.

I think in business, you have to learn to be patient. Maybe I’m not very patient myself. But I think that I’ve learned the most is be able to wait for something and get it when it’s the right time.

What we do in our group is the opposite of the bad effects of globalization. We produce in Italy and in France and we sell to China, when usually it’s the opposite.

Become an expert in one fundamental area of your market or business, no one starts out as a generalist.

It is not enough to have a talented designer; the management must be inspired too. The creative process is very disorganised; the production process has to be very rational.

When I was working in my first job engineering construction, what I liked the most was working with architects and making buildings that had this creative side coming from the architect and that were making them a big success.