Top Ten Elon Musk quotes to live by

From Tesla cars to PayPal, from flights to Mars to the Hyperloop, Elon Musk and his innovations constitute for a truly South African inspiration for anyone who hopes to succeed with a start-up, an invention or just a revolutionary idea in business. Here’s a collection of quotes by Musk to put your gears into motion and give you a spark to move your own projects forward.

 

Elon Musk on his upbringing in South Africa:

“In South Africa there were no pre-made rockets: I had to go to the chemist and get the ingredients for rocket fuel, mix it, put it in a pipe. It is remarkable how many things you can explode. I’m lucky I have all my fingers.”

 

Elon Musk on how to best approach life’s biggest challenges:

“The tough thing is figuring out what questions to ask, but […] once you do that, the rest is really easy.”

 

Elon Musk on basic economics:

“I mean, the market is like a manic depressive.”

 

Elon Musk on having expertise in your field:

“My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me. [Physics is] a good framework for thinking. Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there. When I ask for an explanation, I get the true explanation of how things work.”

 

Elon Musk on the importance of attracting the right kind of talent:

“Talent is extremely important. It’s like a sports team, the team that has the best individual player will often win, but then there’s a multiplier from how those players work together and the strategy they employ.”

 

Elon Musk on what is (not) the perfect holiday:

“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 on the culture of fear:

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

 

Elon Musk on accepting criticism:

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

 

Elon Musk on going to infinity and beyond:

“There’s a fundamental difference, if you look into the future, between a humanity that is a space-faring civilization, that’s out there exploring the stars … compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event.”

 

Elon Musk on his new home in the US:

“The United States – it’s sort of like that comment about democracy – it’s a bad system but it’s the least bad. Well, the United States is the least bad at encouraging innovation.”

 

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