I’m a big believer that a small number of exceptional people who are highly motivated can do better than a large number of people who are pretty good and moderately motivated.

If you go back 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.

Be stronger than those who hate you, so that they cannot destroy you, and then forgive them.

My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars - this is very important - so you don't have to carry the return fuel when you go there.

Even a small increase in Earth's gravity would make it impossible to launch Starship.

At SpaceX we specialize in converting things from impossible to late.

I mean, we’re all going to die someday, if you’re going to pick some place to die, then why not Mars?

Having children is saving the world.

If Tesla & SpaceX go bankrupt, so will I. As it should be.

Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.

To make an embarrassing admission, I like video games. That's what got me into software engineering when I was a kid. I wanted to make money so I could buy a better computer to play better video games - nothing like saving the world.

Rockets are cool. There's no getting around that.

If you aren't getting rejected on a daily basis, your goals aren't ambitious enough.

Failure is irrelevant unless it is catastrophic.

We don't want to be one of those single-planet species, we want to be a multi-planet species.

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

Adversity shaped me. My pain threshold became very high.

I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems... It's got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.

If you look at space companies, they've failed either because they've had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.

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.

The window to make Earth life multiplanetary is open for the first time in 4.5 billion years. Let’s go!

I have too many ideas, Ideas are relatively easy, execution is hard.

Killing the demons in a video game, calms the demons in my mind.

When you struggle with a problem, that's when you understand it.

If a timeline is long, it’s wrong.

Trust nothing, not even nothing.

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.

Life is too short for long-term grudges.

Killing the Demons in a Video Game, calms the Demons in my mind.

I think there will be 20 billion humanoid robots.

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

It's a real weakness to want to be liked, a real weakness, and I do not have that.

If life is a video game, the graphics are great, but the plot is confusing and the tutorial is way too long.

My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-launch within a few hours of landing.

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.

The most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize something that should not exist.

It is not the degree but the skill that achieves success.

The Earth can probably take 10x the current civilisation.

It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.

I think there was like literally one week where I actually worked 120 hours and just didnt leave the factory. I didnt even go outside

If something's important enough, you should try. Even if - the probable outcome is failure.

Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.

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

At this point, I think I know more about manufacturing than anyone currently alive on earth.

A number of these very high priced art things are tax evasion and money laundering.

You shouldn't do things differently just because they're different. They need to be... better.

I feel fear quite strongly. Its not as though I have the absence of fear. But there are times when something is important enough, you believe in it enough, that you do it in spite of fear.

Patience is a virtue, and I'm learning patience. It's a tough lesson.

It's OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.

Of anything in my life, I would say kids by far make me the happiest.

If you do something like read a lot of books and talk to a lot of people, you can learn almost anything.

I only have 0.4 donuts at a time, because my brain neural network quantizes it down to 0 donuts.