Ceo Quotes

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.

What I'm trying to do is to maximise the probability of the future being better.

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.

I'm anti-tax, but I'm pro-carbon tax.

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You're encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren't that smart, who aren't that creative.

Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of what you're doing is as valuable as gold

It's a fixer-upper of a planet but we could make it work.

I've been to Disneyland, like, 10 times. I'm getting really tired of Disneyland.

When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.

We can't have, like, willy-nilly proliferation of fake news. That's crazy. You can't have more types of fake news than real news. That's allowing public deception to go unchecked. That's crazy.

I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy.

Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.

The biggest mistake, in general, I've made, is to put too much of a weighting on someone's talent and not enough on their personality. And I've made that mistake several times. I think it actually matters whether somebody has a good heart, it really does. I've made the mistake of thinking that it's sometimes just about the brain.

I'm increasingly inclined to think there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level just to make sure that we don't do something very foolish.

As a child I would just question things.

I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

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.

If you're co-founder or CEO, you have to do all kinds of tasks you might not want to do. If you don't do your chores, the company won't succeed. No task is too menial.

Here in the West, people often don't like listening to their leaders, even if they are right.

If you're entering anything where there's an existing marketplace, against large, entrenched competitors, then your product or service needs to be much better than theirs. It can't be a little bit better, because then you put yourself in the shoes of the consumer... you're always going to buy the trusted brand unless there's a big difference.

That's my lesson for taking a vacation: vacation will kill you.

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

I started SpaceX with the expectation of failure.

I don't spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.

Even if producing CO2 was good for the environment, given that we're going to run out of hydrocarbons, we need to find some sustainable means of operating.

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.

People often mistake technology for a static picture. It's less like a picture and more like a movie. It's the velocity of technology innovation that matters. It's the acceleration.

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.

I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people.

Humans need to be a multiplanet species.

The reality is gas prices should be much more expensive then they are because we're not incorporating the true damage to the environment and the hidden costs of mining oil and transporting it to the U.S. Whenever you have an unpriced externality, you have a bit of a market failure, to the degree that eternality remains unpriced.

One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree - make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.

I read books and talked to people. I mean that's kind of how one learns anything. There's lots of great books out there & lots of smart people.

I'd rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.

Facebook is quite entrenched and has a network effect. It's hard to break into a network once it's formed.

I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.

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.

I think whenever something is - whenever there's something that affects the public good, then there does need to be some form of public oversight.

There's a real opportunity to have a vertical takeoff and landing electric supersonic jet.

You want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse.

Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.

The path to the CEO's office should not be through the CFO's office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.

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.

We need to figure out how to have the things we love, and not destroy the world.

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

So we originally expected to make about 35 gigawatt hours at the cell level and about 50 gigawatt hours at the module or pack level. Now we are expecting to do about 150 gigawatt hours in the same volumetric space as the original design.

My family fears that the Russians will assassinate me.

I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.

Starting a business is not for everyone. Starting a business - I'd say, number one is have a high pain threshold.

When people really understand it's do or die [and] if we work hard and pull through, it's going to be a great outcome; people will give it everything they've got.

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.

There are some important differences between me and Tony Stark, like I have five kids, so I spend more time going to Disneyland than parties.

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

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.

America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.

I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.

If anyone thinks they'd rather be in a different part of history, they're probably not a very good student of history. Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You'd probably have no teeth by now. It would be particularly awful if you were a woman.

I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.

I do think there is a lot of potential if you have a compelling product and people are willing to pay a premium for that. I think that is what Apple has shown. You can buy a much cheaper cell phone or laptop, but Apple's product is so much better than the alternative, and people are willing to pay that premium.

The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication.