My motivation for all my companies has been to be involved in something that I thought would have a significant impact on the world.
If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea.
I really like computer games, but then if I made really great computer games, how much effect would that have on the world.
When I was a little kid, I was really scared of the dark. But then I came to understand, dark just means the absence of photons in the visible wavelength – 400 to 700 nanometers. Then I thought, well, it’s really silly to be afraid of a lack of photons. Then I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore after that.
When I was a child, there’s one thing I said: ‘I never want to be alone.’ That’s what I would say.
If you buy a ticket to hell, it isn’t fair to blame hell.
Life needs to be more than just solving problems every day. You need to wake up and be excited about the future.
I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness, to make sure it continues into the future.
Stop being patient and start asking yourself, how do I accomplish my 10-year plan in 6 months? You will probably fail but you will be a lot further ahead of the person who simply accepted it was going to take 10 years.
Don’t confuse schooling with education. I didn’t go to Harvard but the people that work for me did.
I was raised by books. Books, and then my parents.
Whatever area that you get into, given that, even if you’re the best of the best, there’s always a chance of failure. So, I think it’s important that you really like whatever you’re doing. If you don’t like it, life is too short. And also, if you like what you are doing, you think about it even when you are not working. It’s something your mind drawn to. And if you don’t like it, you just really can’t make it work I think.
My children didn’t choose to be born, I chose to have children. They owe me nothing, I owe them everything.
Science is discovering the essential truths about what exists in the Universe, engineering is about creating things that never existed.
At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful. It basically gives mean people a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue.
Education is basically downloading data and algorithms into your brain.
There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future?
At SpaceX, we specialize in converting things from impossible to late.
The most entertaining outcome is the most likely.
I wonder how many dead one-planet civilizations are out there in the cosmos that never made it to the other planet and ultimately extinguished themselves or were destroyed by external factors. Probably a few.
Possessions weigh you down.