Quotes from Elon Musk

It's not as though we can keep burning coal in our power plants. Coal is a finite resource, too. We must find alternatives, and it's a better idea to find alternatives sooner then wait until we run out of coal, and in the meantime, put God knows how many trillions of tons of CO2 that used to be buried underground into the atmosphere.

A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. I just happen to be the face of the companies.

We polled Tesla owners, do you want autopilot disabled or not. Not one person wanted it disabled. That's pretty telling.

The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S.

An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us.

Generally, the view that I've had on Twitter is if you're on Twitter, you're in, like, the meme - you're in meme war land. If you're on Twitter, you're in the arena. And so, essentially, if you attack me, it is therefore OK for me to attack back.

It is theoretically possible to warp spacetime itself, so you're not actually moving faster than the speed of light, but it's actually space that's moving.

I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved.

For me it was never about money, but solving problems for the future of humanity.

Funded by the government just means funded by the people. Government, by the way, has no money. It only takes money from the people. Sometimes people forget that that's really what occurs.

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.

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.

And we need things in life that are exciting and inspiring. It can't just be about solving some awful problem. There have to be reasons to get up in the morning.

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

I'm extremely confident that solar will be at least a plurality of power, and most likely a majority... in less than 20 years.

Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.

I don't think it's a good idea to plan to sell a company.

It's just mind-blowingly awesome. I apologize, and I wish I was more articulate, but it's hard to be articulate when your mind's blown-but in a very good way.

Government isn't that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you've got to have commercial companies do it.

Great companies are built on great products.

I'm nauseatingly pro-American. I would have come here from any country. The U.S. is where great things are possible.

If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.

I always see what's... wrong. Would you want that? When I see a car or a rocket or spacecraft, I only see what's wrong. I never see what's right. It's not a recipe for happiness.

What I'm trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.