"My last words would be: I would encourage everyone to be optimistic and excited about the future. For quality of life, it's better to error on the side of being an optimist and wrong rather than a pessimist and right." Elon Musk
“The value of Al companies will exceed non-Al probably by an order of magnitude”
“Try to be as useful as possible… …don’t aspire to glory aspire to work”
“if you ask the wrong question, then the right answer is impossible.”
“Time is the one true currency”
“We don’t want to be one of those lame one planet civilizations”
“If we don’t make humans we won’t have humanity”
“For most people, the difference between being happy and unhappy is deciding to be happy”
“nobody digs their own graves better than themselves”
“There was a lot of engineering done, and there were a lot of right answers to the wrong questions”
“one of my friends said; starting a company is like eating glass and staring off into the abyss”
“I was asked, what can you say to encourage people to start companies, I’m like if you need encouragement don’t start a company”
“Success is one of the possible outcomes. The probability is uncertain, but above zero.”
“At SpaceX we specialize in converting / turning things from Impossible to Late”
“The true economy is the output of goods and services, it’s not money. Money, or anything that you call money, is a way for us to conveniently exchange goods and services without having to engage in barter, and also to shift obligations in time. Money is a database, it’s an information system for labor allocation and exchange of goods and services and translating in time.”
“Turn a nightmare into a dream with Tesla Insurance”
“I certainly would like to maintain health for a longer period of time, but I’m not afraid of dying, I think it will come as a relief.”
"There are no certainties; only probabilities "
“essentially, the longer you do anything, the more mistakes that you will make cumulatively.”
“Freedom is the Maximum set of possible future actions”
“ The product errors reflect the organizational errors.”
“When something is important enough you do it even when the odds are not in your favor.”
“ If you were really good at manufacturing, In high volume, you can basically make anything for a cost, that asymptotically approaches the raw material values of the constituents plus any intellectual property that you need to license”
“ The fundamental constraint is labor, there are not enough people. I cannot emphasize this enough, there are not enough people. I think one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birth rate, and the rapidly declining birth rate.”
Interviewer (as a male feminist): "why do rockets look like penises? It's not fair, can we make vagina shaped rockets as well" Elon: "aerodynamics and hydrodynamics share similar properties whether biological or mechanical."
“ People don’t change their mind, they just die”
“ You can think of the government as simply a corporation in the limit; the government is simply the biggest corporation with a monopoly on violence and where you have no recourse”
“ it does not make sense to take the job of capital allocation away from people who have demonstrated great skill in capital allocation, and give it to an entity that has demonstrated poor skill of capital allocation, which is the Government “
“I think the role of government should be that like a referee, but not a player on the field”
“ As the saying goes, if you’re going through hell, keep going “
“The reality of doing the right thing matters more than the perception of doing the right thing”
“Second place should need a telescope to see us”
“Q; Do you believe in god? A; I believe there is some explanation for this universe, which you might call god.”
“At a certain point people have to get tired of being wrong”
“In retrospect, it was inevitable”
“What is the economy? At the foundation it is labor. … The economy at its foundational level, is labor. Is there any actual limit to the economy, maybe not.”
“Step 1) Make the requirements less dumb. Your requirements are definitely dumb. It doesn’t matter who gave them to you, it’s particularly dangerous if a smart person gave them to you, because you might not question them enough. Everyone’s wrong, no matter who you are, everyone is wrong some of the time. Whatever requirement or constraint you have must come with the name not a department, because you can’t ask the department you must ask a person. Step 2) Try very hard to Delete the part or process. If you’re not adding things back in 10% of the time and you’re clearly not deleting enough. Step 3) Simplify or optimize. Optimize is third because the most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize a thing that should not exist. Step 4) Accelerate cycle time. But don’t go faster until you’ve worked on the other three things first. Like if you’re digging your grave don’t dig it faster, stop digging your grave. Step 5) Automate. Now I have personally made the mistake of going backwards on all the steps, multiple times.”
“It’s a rapidly changing situation. Think of it like a guided missile, a guided missile is going in the wrong direction at any given time, but it course corrects. You don’t want to be a super precise cannonball, where you don’t even know where the target is”
“The value of a fully electric autonomous fleet is insanely gigantic, it boggles the mind really; so that will be one of the most valuable things that is ever done in the history of civilization.”
“Prototypes are easy, volume production is hard, positive cash flow is excruciating.”
“Well that sounds like a unique experience you should tell everyone about”
“I’m sorry but at this particular time that’s looking like CAP. If anything changes, I’ll pull up”
“ A well-thought-out critique of whatever you’re doing is as valuable as gold. And you should seek that from everyone you can but particular your friends. Usually your friends know what’s wrong, but they don’t wanna tell you because they don’t wanna hurt you. ... it doesn’t mean your friends right right, very often they are right. You should take the approach that you’re wrong, your goal is to be less wrong”
“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”
Excerpts from a meeting between Elon Musk and Sandy Munro at Boca Chica; “Organizational structure errors manifest themself in the product” “It’s silicon, LA is silicone valley” “Shorting is a vice disguised as a virtue” “A car that does not have self driving in the future, will be about as popular as a horse” Elon Musk “A lot of right answers to the wrong questions”
“ let me just break it to the fools out there, if you don’t make stuff, theres no stuff “
"Rules and regulations are immortal and if we keep making more every year and do not do something about removing them, then eventually we'll be able to do nothing."
“Meetings or what happens when people aren’t working.”
“...success is in the set of all possible outcomes...”
“Good ideas are always crazy until they’re not”
“It is important to view knowledge as some sort of semantic tree. Make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves / details or there’s nothing for them to hang on to”
“The first mistakes I want to correct are the ones I make. “
“ The best part is no part. The best process is no process.”
“...let me break it down for the fools out there; if you don’t make stuff, there’s no stuff”
“People should be Less risk-averse when there’s not much at risk”
Journalist “BYD, which is the west coast, is ramping up production of their electric vehicle, Wait why are you laughing...” “...[laughing] have you seen their car?”