Top 200 Elon Musk Quotes (2023 Update)

1. “If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.”

— Elon Musk

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2. “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”

— Elon Musk

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

— Elon Musk

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4. “I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”

— Elon Musk

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

— Elon Musk

6. “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

7. “Don’t be afraid of new arenas.”

— Elon Musk

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

— Elon Musk

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9. “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.”

— Elon Musk

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

— Elon Musk

11. “Pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends. Hardly anyone does that, and it’s incredibly helpful.”

— Elon Musk

12. “Life is too short for long-term grudges.”

— Elon Musk

13. “If you need inspiring words, don’t do it.”

— Elon Musk

14. “Life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems. It’s got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.”

— Elon Musk

15. “Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.”

— Elon Musk

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

— Elon Musk

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

— Elon Musk

18. “Great companies are built on great products.”

— Elon Musk

19. “You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that’s wrong with it and fix it. Seek negative feedback, particularly from friends.”

— Elon Musk

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

— Elon Musk

21. “I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact.”

— Elon Musk

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

— Elon Musk

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23. “When you struggle with a problem, that’s when you understand it.”

— Elon Musk

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

— Elon Musk

Featured in: Inspirational Entrepreneurship Quotes

25. “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.”

— Elon Musk

26. “I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.”

— Elon Musk

27. “When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, ‘Nah, what’s wrong with a horse?’ That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.”

— Elon Musk

28. “You want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse.”

— Elon Musk

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

— Elon Musk

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30. “My motivation for all my companies has been to be involved in something that I thought would have a significant impact on the world.”

— Elon Musk

31. “When I started SpaceX I thought that the most likely outcome was failure. And I think to have any other expectation would have been irrational.”

— Elon Musk

32. “The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.”

— Elon Musk

33. “Most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying.”

— Elon Musk

Featured in: Quotes About Trying, Quotes About People

34. “Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.”

— Elon Musk

35. “If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.”

— Elon Musk

36. “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.”

— Elon Musk

37. “We’re running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.”

— Elon Musk

38. “The idea of lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. It sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I’d be super-duper bored. I like high intensity.”

— Elon Musk

39. “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.”

— Elon Musk

40. “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.”

— Elon Musk

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

— Elon Musk

42. “It is remarkable how many things you can explode. I’m lucky I have all my fingers.”

— Elon Musk

43. “Many things are improbable, only a few are impossible.”

— Elon Musk

44. “If humanity doesn’t land on Mars in my lifetime, I would be very disappointed.”

— Elon Musk

Featured in: Space Quotes, Quotes About Mars

45. “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.”

— Elon Musk

46. “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.”

— Elon Musk

47. “There are some important differences between me and Tony Stark, like I have five kids, so I spend more time going to Disneyland than parties.”

— Elon Musk

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

— Elon Musk

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

— Elon Musk

50. “Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket – half a million dollars. It can be done.”

— Elon Musk

Featured in: Quotes About Mars