Elon Musk: Likeness

“I would like to die on Mars; just not on impact.”

Elon Musk

[Vance, Ashley, Elon Musk, the 21st Century Industrialist, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-13/elon-musk-the-21st-century-industrialist#p5, 14 September 2012, Bloomberg, 13 September 2012]

Funny

“The long term ultimate objective – the holy grail – is we would like to help make life multi-planetary.”

Elon Musk

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

Life , Help

“I don’t have an issue with serving in the military per se, but serving in the South African army suppressing black people just didn’t seem like a really good way to spend time.”

Elon Musk

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

People , Way , Time

“So even if a fire develops, it can't really attack the particularly vulnerable locations like the pneumatic system or the avionics or the engine bay. We want to be in the situation that even if a fire develops, the rocket just keeps going.”

Elon Musk

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

“Rocket engineering is not like ditch digging. With ditch digging you can get 100 people and dig a ditch, and you will dig it a hundred times as faster if you get 100 people versus one. With rockets, you have to solve the problem of a particular level of difficulty; one person who can solve the problem is worth an infinite number of people who can’t.”

Elon Musk

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

People , Problem , Time , Personality

“A good sign as to whether there is free speech is, "Is someone you don't like allowed to say something you don't like?"”

Elon Musk

Elon Musk talks Twitter, Tesla and how his brain works — live at TED2022 https://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_elon_musk_talks_twitter_tesla_and_how_his_brain_works_live_at_ted2022, April 14, 2022 (at 19:39)

“I like to be involved in things that change the world. The Internet did, and space will probably be more responsible for changing the world than anything else. If humanity can expand beyond the Earth, obviously that's where the future is.”

Elon Musk

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

World , Change , Future

“In terms of the Internet, it's like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a… collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system. It's a hugely impactful thing.”

Elon Musk

[Mann, Adam, Video: Wired’s Interview with SpaceX’s Elon Musk, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/elon-musk-hangout/, 18 August 2012, Wired, 26 April 2012]

Communication

“We are used to things improving every year; we are used to having a better cell phone next year than this year; a better lap top. We are even used to some basic things, like we expect more from your car in next year’s model than last year’s model. But this is not the case in space; reliability and cost - those are the fundamental parameters of transportation - have not improved.”

Elon Musk

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

Cars

“"People tend to think like, 'Why should electric vehicles have a subsidy,' but they're not taking into account that all fossil fuel-burning vehicles fundamentally are subsidised by the cost—the environmental cost—to Earth, but nobody's paying for it… We are going to pay for it, obviously—in the future we'll pay for it. It's just not paid for now."—Elon Musk”

Elon Musk

interview with Joe Rogan, published 2018-09-06

People , Thinking , Future

“They [Apple] have hired people we've fired. We always jokingly call Apple the "Tesla Graveyard." If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I'm not kidding…. cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches. You can't just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: Build me a car. But for Apple, the car is the next logical thing to finally offer a significant innovation. A new pencil or a bigger iPad alone were not relevant enough.”

Elon Musk

All Charged Up in Berlin http://global.handelsblatt.com/edition/271/ressort/companies-markets/article/all-charged-up-in-berlin in Handelsblatt (25 September 2015)

People , Cars

“People are mistaken when they think that technology just automatically improves. It does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of people work very hard to make it better, and actually it will, I think, by itself degrade, actually. You look at great civilizations like Ancient Egypt, and they were able to make the pyramids, and they forgot how to do that. And then the Romans, they built these incredible aqueducts. They forgot how to do it.”

Elon Musk

Career advice from Elon Musk's latest TED interview, in one sentence http://www.businessinsider.com/brilliant-career-advice-from-elon-musk-2017-5 at 2017 TED conference (May 9, 2017)

People , Thinking

“It’s so insane the way rockets work today. It would be like if you got a plane and the way you get to your destination is you bail out with a parachute over the city in question and your plane crash lands somewhere. That’s how rockets work today—with the exception of Falcon 9. This is completely bonkers.”

Elon Musk

TIME Magazine, 12 July 2019, https://time.com/5628572/elon-musk-moon-landing/

Way , Question

“One thing that is important is that, if you have a choice between a lower valuation with someone you really like, or higher valuation with someone you have a question mark about, take the lower valuation.”

Elon Musk

During an interview with PandoDaily - Fireside Chat With Elon Musk - Jul, 17th 2012

Question