“For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never.”

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.

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.

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.

A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.

Excellence at everything you can do can be achieved on if it is a habit.

Start wide, expand further, and never look back.

Only a fool never changes his mind.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

Always think, ‘what’s the worst that can happen’ and have some kind of strategy to deal with it.

The mark of an innovative company is not only that it comes up with new ideas first, but also that it knows how to leapfrog when it finds itself behind.