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Unveiling the Mind of Elon Musk: 55 Quotes That Define His Vision and Ambition

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Elon Musk is an entrepreneur, inventor, engineer and business magnate known for his involvement in several high-profile technology companies and most recently, for his purchase of social media platform Twitter. He was named TIME’s “Person of the Year” in 2021 and has an estimated net worth of around $240 billion as of July 2023.

Musk is the CEO and lead designer of SpaceX, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc., CEO of Neuralink, CEO of Twitter, and founder of The Boring Company. He has gained popularity primarily due to his ambitious vision and achievements in the fields of electric vehicles, space exploration, and renewable energy.

His charismatic personality, active presence on social media, and penchant for making bold and sometimes controversial statements have also contributed to his popularity. He has gained a large following of fans and supporters who are inspired by his vision for the future and his relentless pursuit of technological advancements.

Below, you’ll find 55 quotes by Elon Musk that display his ideas on entrepreneurship, business management, technology and innovation, environmental sustainability, and more.

SpaceX: Musk founded SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.) in 2002 to reduce space transportation costs and make space exploration more accessible. SpaceX has made significant advancements in reusable rocket technology and has successfully launched numerous missions to the International Space Station (ISS). In 2020, it became the first private company to send humans to space. In July 2023, SpaceX set a new record with more than 4,000 Starlink satellites in orbit around Earth.
Tesla, Inc.: Musk played a crucial role in the success of Tesla since he became heavily involved in 2004. An electric vehicle and clean energy company. Tesla produced innovative electric cars, such as the Tesla Roadster, Model S, Model 3, and Model Y, under his leadership. Tesla revolutionized the automotive industry and popularized sustainable transportation.
Neuralink: In 2016, Musk founded Neuralink , a neurotechnology company focused on developing implantable brain-machine interface devices. The company aims to enhance human capabilities and potentially address neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and paralysis.
Hyperloop and The Boring Company: Musk proposed the concept of the Hyperloop, a high-speed transportation system, and later founded The Boring Company to develop tunneling technology in 2017. Projects by The Boring Company aim to alleviate traffic congestion and improve transportation efficiency. However, only one of the seven proposed projects has been completed so far, with minimal success.
Twitter: After years of interest, Musk acquired Twitter in 2022. Since his acquisition, he has made a series of controversial changes to the social media platform, including implementing a subscription service for “blue-checks” and reinstating individuals who had been banned for violating the company’s policies, including Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Ye (formerly known as Kayne West).
Mars Colonization: Musk has expressed a long-term vision of establishing a human settlement on Mars. He has outlined plans for SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft, which is intended to transport humans and cargo to Mars. Musk’s ambition and dedication to making life multiplanetary have garnered significant attention.

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

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

3. “Pay attention to negative feedback, and solicit it, particularly from friends.”

4. “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.”

5. “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.”

6. “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.”

7. “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.”

8. “Great companies are built on great products.”

9. “You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be . . . better.”

10. “There are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions.”

11. “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.”

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

13. “The key to making things affordable is design and technology improvements as well as scale.”

14. “Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.”

15. “Over time, I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.”

16. “All orgs developing advanced AI should be regulated, including Tesla.”

17. “If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.”

18. “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.”

19. “If humanity doesn’t land on Mars in my lifetime, I would be very disappointed.”

20. “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.”

21. “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.”

22. “I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.”

23. “Innovation is taking two things that already exist and putting them together in a new way.”

24. “It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”

25. “The duty of a leader is to serve their people, not for the people to serve them.”

26. “I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.”

27. “Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.”

28. “Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.”

29. “Entrepreneurship is like eating glass and walking on hot coals at the same time.”

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

31. “Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.”

32. “We should be much more worried about population collapse.”

33. “We’re running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere . . . can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.”

34. “Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.”

35. “The reality is gas prices should be much more expensive than 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.”

36. “The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it’s the right thing to do. It’s economics 101, elementary stuff.”

37. “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.”

38. “If I’m not in love, if I’m not with a long-term companion, I cannot be happy.”

39. “I’d like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that’s not just email with a view.”

40. “If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.”

41. “I was born in Africa. I came to California because it’s really where new technologies can be brought to fruition, and I don’t see a viable competitor.”

42. “I usually describe myself as an engineer; that’s basically what I’ve been doing since I was a kid.”

43. “I’m personally a moderate and a registered independent, so I’m not strongly Democratic or strongly Republican.”

44. “To be clear, I support the left half of the Republican Party and the right half of the Democratic Party.”

46. “Work like hell. I mean, you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. This improves the odds of success.”

47. “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.”

48. “Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket—half a million dollars. It can be done.”

49. “I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.”

50. “I’m against export controls in general. I think it’s not a good way to address a trade imbalance.” (Referring to relations between China and the U.S.)

51. “My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.” (Referring to Twitter)

52. “If I acquire Twitter and something goes wrong, it’s my fault, 100%. I think there will be quite a few errors.”

53. “I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.”

54. “If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.”

55. “Creating a self-sustaining city on Mars is the ultimate insurance policy for humanity’s survival.”

Throughout his career, Elon Musk has proven that he’s constantly questioning what humans are capable of achieving, and working to find solutions. He hasn’t always been successful, and some of his ideas are controversial, but Musk continues to set his sights on projects that seem nearly impossible.

Based on his work with Tesla and SpaceX, Musk is a changemaker who is driven by innovation and achieving large-scale goals. Although he is not the perfect example of a strong leader, he has demonstrated a talent for innovation.

Elon Musk exhibits the following leadership traits:

Visionary: Known for his ambitious and forward-thinking vision, Musk sets audacious goals and has a clear sense of where he wants to take his companies and industries. With SpaceX, for example, he developed groundbreaking technologies, such as the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, and achieved milestones like the first privately-funded rocket to reach orbit and the first commercial vehicle to visit the International Space Station.
Innovation and Disruption: Musk has demonstrated the ability to disrupt industries through innovative technologies. The development of Tesla’s electric vehicles, for example, disrupted the automotive industry by popularizing sustainable transportation and pushing the boundaries of electric vehicle technology.
Risk-taking: Musk isn’t afraid to take risks and pursue ventures that others might consider too risky or controversial. He demonstrated risk-taking through his commitment to building Gigafactories and investing heavily in Tesla’s production capacity, defying conventional wisdom and challenging established automakers, ultimately leading to Tesla’s success and transformation of the electric vehicle market.
Long-Term Thinking: Musk is known for his long-term thinking and focus on addressing issues with sustainable solutions. His long-term thinking is evident in his pursuit of sustainable energy solutions, as demonstrated by his commitment to developing and popularizing electric vehicles with Tesla, and his investments in renewable energy initiatives like SolarCity, aiming to create a sustainable future for generations to come.
Disruptive Leadership Style: His leadership style is often described as disruptive because he challenges conventional thinking, encourages innovation, and is not afraid to shake up established industries and practices. This is exemplified by SpaceX, which has challenged traditional space industry norms by successfully developing reusable rocket technology, lowering the cost of space travel, and pioneering the concept of commercial space exploration.

To learn more about his qualities as an entrepreneur, read this article next:

4 Ways to Apply Elon Musk’s Leadership Style

Leaders Media has established sourcing guidelines and relies on relevant, and credible sources for the data, facts, and expert insights and analysis we reference. You can learn more about our mission, ethics, and how we cite sources in our editorial policy .

Ball, M. (2021, December 13). Elon Musk is Time’s 2021 Person of the Year . Time. https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2021-elon-musk/
The Real-Time Billionaires List . (n.d.). Forbes. Retrieved July 13, 2023, from https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#7d69d71c3d78
SpaceX . (n.d.). SpaceX. https://www.spacex.com/
Krietzberg, I. (2023, July 10). WATCH: Elon Musk’s SpaceX sets a giant new record. TheStreet . https://www.thestreet.com/technology/watch-elon-musks-spacex-sets-a-giant-new-record
Electric Cars, solar & clean Energy | Tesla . (n.d.). Tesla. https://www.tesla.com/
Play Studio. (n.d.). Neuralink . Neuralink. https://neuralink.com/
The boring company . (n.d.). The Boring Company. https://www.boringcompany.com/
Conger, K., & Hirsch, L. (2022, October 28). Elon Musk completes $44 billion deal to own Twitter. The New York Times . https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/technology/elon-musk-twitter-deal-complete.html
Torchinsky, R. (2022, March 17). Elon Musk hints at a crewed mission to Mars in 2029. NPR . https://www.npr.org/2022/03/17/1087167893/elon-musk-mars-2029
SpaceX . (n.d.-b). SpaceX. https://www.spacex.com/launches/
Furr, N. (2023, April 4). Lessons from Tesla’s Approach to Innovation . Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/02/lessons-from-teslas-approach-to-innovation
Baldwin, R. (2022, October 11). What you need to know about Tesla’s gigafactories. Capital One Auto Navigator . https://www.capitalone.com/cars/learn/finding-the-right-car/what-you-need-to-know-about-teslas-gigafactories/1810
Hamilton, I. A. (2022, May 13). How Elon Musk transformed his cousins’ solar panel company into Tesla Energy, which has faced lawsuits from angry shareholders and consumers. Business Insider . https://www.businessinsider.com/solarcity-tesla-energy-beleaguered-history-elon-musk-2021-7
Jane Marsh – What SpaceX Teaches Us About Renewable Energy Adoption – Renewable Energy Magazine, at the heart of clean energy journalism. (2021, July 26). Jane Marsh – What SpaceX Teaches Us About Renewable Energy Adoption – Renewable Energy Magazine, at the heart of clean energy journalism . Renewable Energy Magazine, at the Heart of Clean Energy Journalism. https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/jane-marsh/what-spacex-teaches-us-about-renewable-energy-20210726

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Elon Musk Quotes

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

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

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

Many things are improbable, only a few are impossible.

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.

People should pursue what they're passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.

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

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

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

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

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

I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.

Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you’re putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing you know that you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve.

Life is too short for long-term grudges.

Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.

I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

Most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying.

With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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Latest quotes from interviews

"The only reason I was able to accomplish things is the great people willing to work with me. A company is a group of people organized to create a product or service, and that product or service is only as good as the people in the company - and how excited they are about creating it. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. Without them, I would have accomplished very little. I just happen to be the face of the companies."

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100 Best Quotes from Elon Musk

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Elon Musk Biography: Visionary Entrepreneur and Innovator

Elon Musk, a name synonymous with groundbreaking technological advancements, is a visionary entrepreneur, inventor, and business magnate. Born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk’s journey has been nothing short of extraordinary.

Early Life and Education

Musk’s relentless pursuit of knowledge began at a young age. He moved to the United States to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned two bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics. He later pursued a Ph.D. at Stanford University, but his entrepreneurial spirit led him to create world-changing companies instead.

Co-Founder of PayPal

In the late ’90s, Musk co-founded X.com, which eventually became PayPal, revolutionizing online payments. PayPal’s success laid the foundation for his future ventures.

SpaceX: Pioneering Space Exploration

In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.), with the audacious goal of reducing space transportation costs and making life multi-planetary. SpaceX achieved numerous milestones, including reusable rockets and plans for Mars colonization.

Tesla: Revolutionizing the Automotive Industry

Musk joined Tesla Motors in 2004 and transformed the electric vehicle industry. Tesla’s innovative electric cars, solar energy solutions, and battery technology have reshaped the automotive landscape and sustainability efforts.

SolarCity, Neuralink, and The Boring Company

Musk’s endeavors don’t stop there. He co-founded SolarCity to promote sustainable energy, launched Neuralink to advance brain-computer interface technology, and founded The Boring Company to address urban transportation challenges with underground tunnels.

Visionary and Philanthropist

Elon Musk’s impact extends beyond business. His advocacy for renewable energy and passion for innovation drive his philanthropic efforts, from addressing climate change to promoting solar energy adoption.

Musk’s relentless pursuit of ambitious goals, from sustainable energy to space colonization, has made him a global icon. His work epitomizes the spirit of innovation and ambition, inspiring countless individuals to dream big and reach for the stars.

Elon Musk Quotes: Wisdom for a Remarkable Life”

Elon Musk, the modern-day visionary and entrepreneur, has not only reshaped industries but also shared profound insights about life, innovation, and the pursuit of greatness. His quotes are a treasure trove of inspiration and motivation, offering valuable lessons for those seeking to make their mark in the world. In this collection, we delve into Elon Musk’s most compelling quotes on ambition, perseverance, and the boundless potential of the human spirit. These Elon Musk quotes are a guiding light for anyone on a journey to achieve the extraordinary.

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

2. “Don’t confuse schooling with education. I didn’t go to Harvard, but the people that work for me did.” – Elon Musk Ezoic

3. Constantly think about how you could be doing things better.

4. “Persistence is very important. you should not give up unless you are forced to give up.” Elon Musk Ezoic

5. “If you go 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.” – Elon Musk

6. (Physics is) a good framework for thinking. … Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.

7. “I like the word ‘autopilot’ more than I like the word ‘self-driving.’ Self-driving sounds like it’s going to do something you don’t want it to do. ‘Autopilot’ is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.” Ezoic

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

9. “Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.” – Elon Musk

10. “In order for us to have a future that’s exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we’re a space-bearing civilization.”

11. “I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.” Elon Musk Ezoic

12. “When you struggle with a problem, that’s when you understand it.” –Elon Musk

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

14. “I really do encourage other manufacturers to bring electric cars to market. It’s a good thing, and they need to bring it to market and keep iterating and improving and make better and better electric cars, and that’s what going to result in humanity achieving a sustainable transport future. I wish it was growing faster than it is.” – Elon Musk

15. “The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.” – Elon Musk Ezoic

16. “If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.”

17. “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.” -Elon Musk

18. “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.” – Elon Musk Quotes

19. “I love music. It makes my heart sing.”

20. “I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.” Ezoic

21. My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

22. “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.” —Elon Musk

23. “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.” – Elon Musk

24. “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” — Elon Musk, Founder and CEO of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla, Inc. Ezoic

25. “If the rules are such that you can’t make progress, then you have to fight the rules.”

26. “The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.” — Elon Musk

27. “If the rules are such that you can’t make progress, then you have to fight the rules.” – Elon Musk

28. “Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.” – Elon Musk Ezoic

29. “I’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and fries my nervous system.”

30. “I take the position that I’m always to some degree wrong, and the aspiration is to be less wrong.”

31. “People work better when they know what the goal is and why.” Elon Musk

32. 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.” — Elon Musk

33. “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.” Ezoic

34. “You have to say, ‘Well, why did it succeed where others did not?’” – Elon Musk

35. “I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact”

36. “Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.” – Elon Musk

37. “I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better”

38. “I’d like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that’s not just email with a view.” Elon Musk Ezoic

39. “Disruptive technology where you really have a big technology discontinuity… tends to come from new companies.”

40. “You have to say, ‘Well, why did it succeed where others did not?’”

41. “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.” – Elon Musk

42. “Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But a brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.”

43. “Let’s just skip original video games & movies & go straight to the sequel” Ezoic

44. “I take the position that I’m always to some degree wrong, and the aspiration is to be less wrong.” Elon Musk

45. “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.” – Elon Musk

46. “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.” – Elon Musk

47. “The first step is to establish that something is possible; then – probability will occur.” – Elon Musk

48. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.” – Elon Musk Ezoic

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

50. “Everything I want is on it’s way to me now.”

51. “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.” – Elon Musk

52. “Someone suggested changing Dogecoin fees based on phases of the moon, which is pretty awesome haha”

53. I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. Ezoic

54. “Where are the aliens?’ Really odd that we see no sign of them. Btw, please don’t mention the pyramids. Stacking stone blocks is not evidence of an advanced civilization. The rumor that I’m building a spaceship to get back to my home planet Mars is totally untrue. The ancient Egyptians were amazing, but if aliens built the pyramids, they would’ve left behind a computer or something.”

55. “I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.” – Elon Musk

56. “Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour workweeks and you’re putting in 100 hour workweeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.”

57. “It’s ok to have your eggs in one basket, as long as you control what happens to that basket”

58. “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.” Ezoic

59. “If other people are putting in 40-hour workweeks and you’re putting in 100-hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.” Elon Musk

60. “Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is a disaster.”

61. “I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.” – Elon Musk

62. “Great initial conversation with @elonmusk tonight. Teams are now talking; exploring opportunities. Next steps soon to follow.”

63. “I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.” – Elon Musk Ezoic

64. “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” Elon Musk

65. “If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.” – Elon Musk

66. “You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be… better.”

67. “Passion and purpose scale – always have, always will.” – Elon Musk

68. “My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.” Ezoic

69. “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.”

70. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

71. “No matter how hard you work, someone else is working harder. ” – Elon Musk

72. 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. Elon Musk, SpaceX.

73. “Dubai is a safe place, and I never came across anything to worry about.” Ezoic

74. “Life is too short for long-term grudges.” – Elon Musk

75. “People underestimate that I’m the world’s first trillionaire. When I say this people go, ‘Oh he’s not that rich.’ I am literally the world’s first trillionaire Elon Musk, I win.”

76. “Goods & services are the real economies, any form of money is simply the accounting thereof”

77. “Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success.” – Elon Musk

78. “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.” Ezoic

79. “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” Elon Musk

80. “It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.”

81. “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.”

82. “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”

83. “I don’t believe in process. In fact, when I interview a potential employee and he or she says that ‘it’s all about the process,’ I see that as a bad sign. 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.” – Elon Musk Ezoic

84. “It’s Only Impossible If You Don’t Try.”

85. “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.” – Elon Musk

86. “I would just question things… It would infuriate my parents… That I wouldn’t just believe them when they said something ’cause I’d ask them why. And then I’d consider whether that response made sense given everything else I knew.”

87. “My mentality is that of a samurai. I would rather commit seppuku than fail.” – Elon Musk

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

89. “I give thanks that I am rich, well, and happy.” Ezoic

90. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.”

91. “I expect lavish abundance every day in every way.”

92. “No matter how hard you work, someone else is working harder. ”–Elon Musk

93. “Optimism, pessimism, f*ck that – we’re going to make it happen.”

94. “I’ve actually not read any books on time management.” Elon Musk

95. Focus on signal over noise. Don’t waste time on stuff that doesn’t actually make things better.” – Elon Musk Ezoic

96. “We could definitely make a flying car — but that’s not the hard part… The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that’s super safe and quiet? Because if it’s a howler, you’re going to make people very unhappy.”

97. “Work every waking hour.” – Elon Musk

98. “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.” – Elon Musk

99. “Life is too short for long-term grudges.” Elon Musk

100. “I am worthy of an abundant life.”

101. “Focus on signal over noise. Don’t waste time on stuff that doesn’t actually make things better.” Elon Musk

Famous Quotes

The 10 Most Inspiring Elon Musk Quotes

The 10 smartest, most-likely-to-blow-your-mind elon musk quotes, the 10 funniest elon musk quotes, more elon musk quotes, the best elon musk quotes for sharing on social media, who is elon musk (his life in 500 words), other quote lists.

Elon gets his inspiration from bringing about a positive, hopeful, optimistic future for humanity. That has been his driving motivator since he was a teenager, and everything he does maps to that vision. In turn, we can get a lot of inspiration from him simply by observing him. Watching the lone warrior fight against the odds makes us want to do and be better, too.

Every now and then, however, Elon also speaks to inspiration more directly. Here are what I think to be his 10 most heartening lines.

1. “Never. I don’t ever give up. I’d have to be dead or completely incapacitated. For my part, I will never give up, and I mean never.”

2. “I think people can choose to be not ordinary. You know, they can choose to not necessarily conform to the conventions that were taught to them by their parents. So, yes, I think it’s possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary. ”

3. “A source of strength, hm. That’s really not how I think about things. For me it’s simply: This is something that is important to get done, and we we should just keep doing it or die trying . I don’t need a source of strength. [Quitting] is not in my nature, and I don’t care about optimism or pessimism. F*ck that, we’re gonna get it done.”

4. “You guys are the magicians of the 21st century. Don’t let anything hold you back. Imagination is the limit. Go out there and create some magic.”

5. “[Mars] would just be the greatest adventure. Ever. And very exciting. And I think 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.”

6. “Take risks now. Do something bold. You won’t regret it.”

7. “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds aren’t in your favor.”

8. “When I was a little kid, I was really scared of the dark. But then I came to understand, okay, 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.”

9. “I feel fear quite strongly. It’s not as though I just have the absence of fear. I feel it quite strongly. But there are times when something is important enough, you believe in it enough, that you do it in spite of the fear. People shouldn’t think, ‘I feel fear about this, and therefore I shouldn’t do it.’ It’s normal to feel fear. There’d have to be something mentally wrong [with you] if you didn’t feel fear. […] If you just accept the probabilities, then that diminishes fear.”

10. “I think it’s very difficult to start companies and quite painful. There’s a friend of mine who’s got a good phrase for doing a startup: ‘It’s like eating glass and staring into the abyss.’ If you’re sort of wired to do it, then you should do it, but not otherwise. If you need inspiring words, don’t do it. ”

Bonus : For more Elon motivation, watch this video . There are thousands of them out there, so don’t get lost for too long, but that one really blew my socks off.

No matter how inspiring you might be, you don’t become the world’s richest man simply by being someone others find encouraging. You have to change the world. From electric cars to sustainable energy to reusable rockets, sustainable AI, brain interfaces, high-speed transportation, and even a walking, learning-capable robot , Elon continues to do so in more ways than one.

As a shy kid with Asperger’s Syndrome , Elon devoured books about science and philosophy as a teenager. He also holds degrees in economics and physics. Most of his ideas that seem genius to you and me, however, he simply discovered while doing an incredible amount of work in a wide-ranging area of disciplines. Here are the 10 Elon quotes most likely to blow your mind:

11. “Well, I do think there’s a good framework for thinking. It is physics. You know, the sort of first principles reasoning. What I mean by that is boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy. Through most of our life, we get through life by reasoning by analogy, which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations. And you have to do that. Otherwise, mentally, you wouldn’t be able to get through the day. But when you want to do something new, you have to apply the physics approach.”

12. “If somebody is doing something that is useful to the rest of society, I think that’s a good thing. It doesn’t have to change the world. If you make something that has high value to people, and frankly even if it’s a little game or, you know, some improvement in photo-sharing — if it has a small amount of good for a large number of people, I think that’s fine. Having something that makes a big difference but affects a small to moderate number of people is great, as is something that makes an even smaller difference but affects a vast number of people. Stuff doesn’t need to change the world to be good. ”

13. “I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying. One bit of advice: It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details, or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”

14. “Somebody could say — and in fact people do — that battery packs are really expensive, and that’s just the way they will always be, because that’s the way they have been in the past. Well, no, that’s pretty dumb. Because if you applied that reasoning to anything new, then you wouldn’t be able to ever get to that new thing. […] For batteries, they would say, ‘historically, it has cost $600 per kilowatt-hour, and so it’s not going to be much better than that in the future.’ So first principles would be to say, ‘What are the material constituents of the batteries? What is the spot market value of the material constituents? It’s got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, some polymers for separation, and a steel can.’ So break that down on a material basis and say, ‘If we bought that on the London Metal Exchange, what would each of those things cost? Oh, jeez, it’s like $80 per kilowatt-hour.’ So, clearly, you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell, and you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than anyone realizes.”

15. “ It’ s very important to actively seek out and listen very carefully to negative feedback. This is something that people tend to avoid because it’s painful, but I think this is a very common mistake. To not actively seek out and listen to negative feedback. […] When friends get a product, I say, ‘Look, don’t tell me what you like. Tell me what you don’t like.’ Because otherwise your friend is not going to tell you what he doesn’t like. You really need to sort of coax negative feedback. If somebody’s your friend or at least not your enemy, and they’re giving you negative feedback, then they may be wrong, but it’s coming from a good place.”

16. “I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself. ”

17. “I read a quote from Arthur C. Clark which said that ‘A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ And that’s really true. If you go back say, 300 years, the things we take for granted today, you’d be burned at the stake for. Being able to fly. That’s crazy. Being able to see over long distances, being able to communicate, having, effectively, with the Internet, a group mind of sorts, and having access to all the world’s information instantly from almost anywhere on the earth. This is stuff that would be considered magic in times past. In fact, I think it actually goes beyond that, because there are many things that we take for granted today that weren’t even imagined in times past. That weren’t even in the realm of magic. So it actually goes beyond that. So I thought, well, if I can do some of those things – if I can advance technology, then that’s like magic, and that would be really cool.”

18. “A good sign as to whether there’s free speech is: Is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like? If that is the case, then we have free speech. And it’s damn annoying when someone you don’t like says something you don’t like. [But] that is a sign of a healthy, functioning, free speech situation.”

19. “One of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask. Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment.”

20. “ Always take the position that you are to some degree wrong, and your goal is to be less wrong over time. One of the biggest mistakes people generally make, and I’m guilty of it too, is wishful thinking. You want something to be true, even if it isn’t true. And so you ignore the real truth because of what you want to be true. This is a very difficult trap to avoid. [So] just take that approach, that you’re always to some degree wrong, and your goal is to be less wrong.”

Bonus : If you’re looking for more smart ideas from the man and want to get deeper into his thinking process, here are 3 of my favorite interviews with him (one short, one medium, one long) that’ll get you the most bang for your buck — or smarts for your time, in this case:

How to Build the Future (with Sam Altman for Y Combinator) (19:32)
Elon Musk talks Twitter, Tesla and how his brain works — live at TED2022 (54:45)
Elon Musk: SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot, Self-Driving, Robotics, and AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #252 (2:31:47)

For all his serious, civilization-affecting activities, Elon seems to still have plenty of fun along the way. Unlike most other billionaires, business magnates, politicians, and otherwise influential figures, however, he actually shares his joy with us. He doesn’t take himself too seriously. He is notorious for posting memes on Twitter, cracking jokes, and often following through on what at first seems like a prank announcement.

From labeling Tesla’s car model lineup with letters spelling “S3XY” to selling flamethrowers, “boring hats,” and burned hair to repainting the sign on Twitter’s headquarters to look like it spells “Titter,” Elon’s antics have made for many laughs over the years. At times, they’ve also gotten him into trouble. In any case, here are Elon’s 10 funniest tweets and jokes:

21. After his acquisition of Twitter to prioritize free speech on the platform again: “Next I’m buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in.”

22. “I would like to die on Mars — just not on impact.”

23. On wrecking his McLaren F1 with Peter Thiel in the passenger seat: “We’re driving up Sand Hill Road, and Peter says: ‘So, what can this do?’ And then, probably number one on the list of famous last words, I said: ‘Watch this.’”

24. While entering Twitter HQ after acquiring the company, holding a sink: “Let that sink in!”

25. After almost dying from a misdiagnosed type of malaria, which he acquired on his first vacation, a trip to Africa, in years: “That’s my lesson for taking a vacation: Vacations will kill you.”

26. “If there’s ever a scandal about me, please call it Elongate.”

27. “I put the art in fart.”

28. For the chemistry nerds: “Technically, alcohol is a solution.”

29. When asked why so many of the SpaceX rocket launches happen at night: “It’s much easier to do the CGI that way.”

30. On the need to go to Mars and beyond: “We can’t be one of those lame one-planet civilizations!”

Bonus : If you want more fun Elon, here’s him hosting Meme Review PewDiePie-style , and here’s a collection of all his appearances in TV shows, cartoons, and Hollywood movies .

This one I pieced together from an interview and his message to SpaceX employees after the third Falcon launch failure.
From an interview at SpaceX .
Talking to Lex Fridman on his podcast .
From his commencement speech at Caltech in 2012 .
Talking to Vanity Fair in 2014 .
From his USC commencement speech in 2014 .
On 60 Minutes in 2012 .
From a documentary I can’t locate in full .
In a 2016 interview with Y Combinator .
To students of Draper University at a Tesla factory tour .
In conversation with head of TED , Chris Anderson, in 2013.
Pieced together from two sections of the Y Combinator interview ( one and two ).
In a Reddit AMA .
Talking to Kevin Rose .
Also from the Kevin Rose interview .
Talking to Lance Ulanoff for Mashable .
From the Caltech commencement speech .
Live at TED 2022 .
As quoted in his biography .
During the World Government Summit in 2017 .
His most liked tweet .
At South by Southwest in 2013 .
In a PandoDaily interview in 2012 .
On Twitter .
Another tweet .
Also Twitter .
Aaaaand Twitter .

The more famous someone becomes, the more people love to put words in their mouth. That’s why there’s a plethora of fake Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, and, well, Elon Musk quotes. Therefore, it’s always best to verify your quotes and stick to their sources. When it comes to Elon, those can be his Twitter account and in-person interviews.

But the best bulk source for more Elon quotes, in my opinion, is Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future *, the only authorized biography of Elon so far, based on more than 30 hours of interviews with him directly and over 200 people who know him. The book is from 2015. There’s also a new biography by famed biographer Walter Isaacson that just came out, but I can’t speak to that one yet. But chronologically speaking, this one’s a great account of the early Tesla and SpaceX days — and Elon’s early life, of course.

Here’s a short overview of the book and two snazzy buttons to either buy the book (and support us with a small commission at no extra charge to you) or read our free, four-minute summary.

Elon Musk Quotes: Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future Book Cover

Favorite Quote

“If the rules are such that you can’t make progress, then you have to fight the rules.” — Elon Musk

The Book in One Sentence

Elon Musk is the first official biography of the creator of SolarCity, SpaceX and Tesla, based on over 30 hours of conversation time between author Ashlee Vance and Musk himself, highlighting his complicated childhood, the way he makes decisions and navigates the world, and how he managed to disrupt multiple industries, all with the goal of saving humanity.

Why should you read it?

Whether you’re a casual observer, hesitant skeptic, or diehard Elon fan, this book provides a great, mostly objective description of his life. It’s easy to judge someone based on a headline some reporter wrote to get clicks and make money. Truly getting to know someone takes work. At the same time, spending a few hours reading a book isn’t that much effort. After reading this book, you’ll know and understand Elon Musk better than 99% of all people on the planet — and there’s a big chance you’ll learn something new for your own journey along the way.

Key Takeaways

Answering questions is easy, asking the right questions is what’s hard.
Use a success-through-determination approach to accomplish your goals.
Unify all of your work under the roof of one giant goal to have a bigger impact on the world.

If you want to learn more, you can read our free, four-minute summary or get a copy for yourself:

As mentioned in the intro, you can use the “highlight and share” feature to post any quote on this page to your socials. We’ve also made some custom images for you to easily tap and share. Some are optimized for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, while others follow Instagram’s classic square format or Pinterest’s more vertical layout.

Elon is obsessed with truth. It’s important to him to understand the world as it truly is and for people to know what his real motives are. He’s also skeptical of the advent of AI. He believes it’s an important and inevitable technology, but also that it must be realized in the right way. As such, we’ve decided to not use AI-generated background images this time. Instead, we stuck with real pictures of Elon Musk, the human being — we hope you’ll enjoy and he won’t mind. Happy sharing!

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Born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971, Elon grew up in a large family of constant travelers. His dad was an engineer and pilot and had a small plane. Elon was a shy and introverted kid, often bullied in school. He usually preferred books and video games to people, and he even sold a game he programmed at age 12 for $500. Elon’s parents divorced when he was nine. After mostly living with his father until he was of age, he became estranged from him and moved to Canada with his brother Kimbal. Initially, they made ends meet working odd jobs, as lumberjacks, for example.

Elon’s goal was always to reach and live in the US, the land of opportunity. He knew it would be easier to get a visa in Canada, and he was right. After attending university for a bit in Ontario, he switched to University of Pennsylvania and attained Bachelor degrees in both physics and economics. Instead of continuing in academia, however, Elon dropped out of his PhD program to start an early internet company with Kimbal . Zip2 brought businesses online and helped newspapers host city guides on the web. They sold the business for $300 million at the height of the dot-com boom.

After that, Elon founded X.com, a payments service which competed and later merged with PayPal. The latter was sold to Ebay for $1.5 billion. Musk then started SpaceX, a reusable-rocket company, and, after getting it off the ground, became Tesla’s CEO in 2008. The early days of those companies were brutal. On the outside, Elon looked wealthy. But of his $180 million fortune, not a single cent was left after funding these ventures . He even had to borrow money for rent .

Between funding issues that almost bankrupted both companies several times, four failed rocket launches before one finally worked, short sellers trying to manipulate Tesla’s stock, and three years of “ production hell ,” during which Elon slept on the floor in the Tesla factory as they desperately tried to ramp up Model 3 output to mass scale, his path to success has been anything but easy. Fortunately, today, 15 years after becoming Tesla’s CEO, Elon is still mainly known for being head of the electric car manufacturer. However, he has also started a slew of other ventures since.

From OpenAI (a non-profit to further controlled AI development) to Starlink (hardware for remote internet access from anywhere), Neuralink (a direct brain-to-computer interface system), and single-handedly buying Twitter, it’s hard to keep track of everything Elon does — and, as in his illustrious and wandering life path, there’s a lesson in that we can take away: Study widely, dive into anything you’re interested in, and never stop learning .

If Elon can teach himself how to program computer games, how to build rockets, and how to get a factory to churn out 100,000+ cars per month , there’s almost nothing you can’t learn either. We hope our list of quotes will inspire you to go after something you’re passionate about or, if you’re already doing that, give it even a little more effort than you already have been.

That’s it! That concludes our list of the 30 best quotes from Elon Musk. What do you think? Did we make some good picks? Or is there something you’re missing? In either case, tweet us your favorite Elon quote , and we’ll continue to occasionally update this list as Elon says more inspiring, smart, and funny things — which I’m sure he’ll keep doing regardless of what anyone thinks of him — and if nothing else, that’s a quality worth emulating.

Looking for more quotes from interesting people and lines from great books? Here are all quote lists we’ve hand-selected for you so far:

The 30 Best & Most Popular Yoda Quotes
The Catcher in the Rye Quotes: The 44 Best & Most Important Quotes From J. D. Salinger’s Masterpiece
The 44 Best & Most Important Stoic Quotes From Seneca, Marcus Aurelius & Co.
414 Short Inspirational Quotes to Motivate You Right Now (2024)
The 44 Most Famous & Thought-Provoking Philosophy Quotes From History’s Greatest Philosophers
The 44 Best & Most Important Quotes From Marcus Aurelius
The 365 Most Famous Quotes of All Time (in 27 Categories, Backed by Data & With Real Sources)
The 21 Best & Most Underrated Dumbledore Quotes
The 33 Best, Most Important, and Most Inspiring Quotes From Bruce Lee
The 45 Best Brené Brown Quotes About Courage, Shame & Vulnerability
Brave New World Quotes: The 50 Best & Most Important Lines From Aldous Huxley’s Masterpiece
The 33 Best, Most Popular, and Most Inspiring Albert Einstein Quotes
1984 Quotes: The 30 Best & Most Important Lines From George Orwell’s Masterpiece

Last Updated on October 2, 2023

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Elon Reeve Musk (born 28 June 1971) is an entrepreneur and business magnate . He is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer at SpaceX ; early-stage investor, CEO, and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc. ; founder of The Boring Company ; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI ; president of the Musk Foundation ; and owner of X Corp. , formerly known as Twitter, Inc . With an estimated net worth of about US$195 billion as of November 2022, Musk is the wealthiest person in the world according to the Bloomberg billionaires index and the Forbes real-time billionaires list.

1.2.1 Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)
1.7.1 Foreword to Marc Kaufman's Mars Up Close
1.12.1 "Starship Update" talk at the SpaceX facility in Boca Chica, Texas on September 28, 2019
2 Quotes about Musk
4 External links

Quotes [ edit ]

2005 [ edit ].

Fast Company, article "Hondas in Space" (1 February 2005)

2007 [ edit ]

Conversation: elon musk on wired science (2007) [ edit ].

Life is too short for long-term grudges.
I didn’t really expect to make any money. If I could make enough to cover the rent and buy some food that would be fine. As it turns out, it turned out to be quite valuable in the end.
I don’t have an issue with serving in the military per se, but serving in the South African army suppressing black people just didn’t seem like a really good way to spend time.
I think South Africa is a great country.
If you wanted to be close to the cutting edge, particularly in technology, you came to North America.
Tuition costs are outrageous. Fortunately, they gave me a scholarship…so I only had to cover living expenses, books, etc., by working.
One was the Internet, one was clean energy and one was space.
I could either watch it happen, or be part of it.
We could figure out ways with small aerospace companies to do a low-cost spacecraft and lander. But we could not find a way to do a low-cost launcher, unless we went to the Russians.
The answer was we thought it could be done.
There is nothing inherently expensive about rockets. It's just that those who have built and operated them in the past have done so with horrendously poor efficiency.
Falcon One is going to be the lowest cost per flight to orbit of any production rocket.
Which means we’re cheaper than the Chinese, cheaper than [the] Russians or anywhere else – and we’re doing it in the United States with American labour costs .
I think the reason it’s cheaper is, first of all, we are a private entity and we have a very lean system in here. What we have been able to do here at SpaceX is to cherry-pick, you know, the top one or two percent and give them, you know, capital to execute well and a clear mission, which is low cost, reliable access to space, and no other constraints.
Well, I have tried to learn as much as possible from prior attempts.
If nothing else, we are committed to failing in a new way.
There’s a graveyard of prior attempts, a big graveyard. There’s probably some freshly dug graves just waiting to be filled. Our aspiration is to avoid that destination.
I think we’ve got the risks pretty well characterized. I think we are at least avoiding the mistakes that have been made in the past.
I think the rocket business is quite cyclic. There are a great many peaks and troughs.
Imagine creating a huge software program that can only be tested in little pieces on a computer that is slightly different from what it is supposed to run on. However, when you do run it as a whole on the actual computer for the first time, it must run almost flawlessly without a single significant bug. When is the last time you saw a software program do that?
When thinking about starting a business, I think it’s actually better to start in a trough and come to market in a peak, than the other way around. Frankly, if anything does, and it’s almost cliché, space has a long-term future.
I want to be able to make sure that we have enough capital to survive at least three consecutive failures. If you want to make a small fortune in the launch vehicle business, start with a large one.
The long term ultimate objective – the holy grail – is we would like to help make life multi-planetary.
We got to the moon, but have never done anything better since. I'm disappointed that we have not made more progress since Apollo. I don't even see a plan that says we're going to do better than Apollo to exceed that goal.
I like to be involved in things that change the world. The Internet did, and space will probably be more responsible for changing the world than anything else. If humanity can expand beyond the Earth, obviously that's where the future is.
If we can be one of the companies that makes it possible for humans to become a multi-planetary species, that would be the Holy Grail. It sounds a bit crazy but it's going to happen, and only if people build the means to do so. We're making progress toward a greater philosophical goal while building a sound business.
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.
It doesn’t do a great deal to advance the goal of humanity. I would pay $20 million not to spend six months in Russia. And besides this, my interest is how do we enable many other people to go to space, not necessarily me, personally.
If we can build something that is capable of taking people and equipment to Mars, such that it can service a transportation infrastructure for humanity becoming a multi- planet species - which I think is a very, very important objective - then I would consider the mission of SpaceX successful, at that point.
We are used to things improving every year; we are used to having a better cell phone next year than this year; a better lap top. We are even used to some basic things, like we expect more from your car in next year’s model than last year’s model. But this is not the case in space; reliability and cost - those are the fundamental parameters of transportation - have not improved.
Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.
So even if a fire develops, it can't really attack the particularly vulnerable locations like the pneumatic system or the avionics or the engine bay. We want to be in the situation that even if a fire develops, the rocket just keeps going.
A great deal of bargaining power with suppliers. We are never locked in to anyone.
I think 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.
My approach is simply to seek out very talented people, ensure that the environment at SpaceX is as motivating & enjoyable as possible and establish clear & measurable objectives.
Rocket engineering is not like ditch digging. With ditch digging you can get 100 people and dig a ditch, and you will dig it a hundred times as faster if you get 100 people versus one. With rockets, you have to solve the problem of a particular level of difficulty; one person who can solve the problem is worth an infinite number of people who can’t.
I think that is a mistake and results in cloudy judgment on important technical issues. They can't tell if something is really good or not, so they just do what everyone else does, assuming it to be the safe bet.
We're adding a triple sign-off for all work done on the launch pad, on flight components, and flight critical GSE. You have a technician, a responsible engineer, and then quality assurance will sign the final, record all information, and take photographs of all the work that was done, and then make sure that all information is put into our quality assurance database, which is reviewed prior to launch.
Although I am new in the business, my team is not. I would say that, person for person, there has never been a better rocket company in existence, in history. I don’t think there has ever been a group this talented in one place, in one company, developing a rocket – ever. If you have millions of dollars it changes your lifestyle, and anyone who says differently is talking ########. I don’t need to work, from a standard of living point of view, but I do, you know. I work every day and on weekends and I haven’t taken a vacation for years.
This is the chance to fulfill a dream.
I’m nauseatingly pro-American. It is where great things are possible.
As life’s agents, it’s on our shoulders.

2008 [ edit ]

1 October 2008 via Esquire

2009 [ edit ]

24 August 2009 Plugged In: Can Elon Musk lead the way to an electric-car future? . New Yorker.

2012 [ edit ]

18 March 2012 60 Minutes , season 44, episode 26
26 March 2012 Driving With Elon Musk .
26 April 2012 Mann, Adam. " Video: Wired’s Interview with SpaceX’s Elon Musk ". Wired . Retrieved on 18 August .
15 June 2012 15 June 2012 Caltech Commencement Address
13 July 2012 Garber, Megan. " The Real iPod: Elon Musk's Wild Idea for a 'Jetson Tunnel' from S.F. to L.A. ". The Atlantic . Retrieved on 21 July 2012 . regarding Hyperloop
17 July 2012 during interview with PandoDaily - Fireside Chat With Elon Musk
12 September 2012 Vance, Ashley. " Elon Musk, the 21st Century Industrialist ". Bloomberg . Retrieved on 14 September 2012 .

2013 [ edit ]

19 March 2013 Elon Musk: The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity ... .
30 May 2013 Tesla speeds up free nationwide charging network, 20-minute quick repower . Yahoo!.

2014 [ edit ]

Foreword to marc kaufman's mars up close [ edit ], 2015 [ edit ].

January 23, 2015 Colonizing Mars The Future Belongs to SpaceX and Elon Musk
First, you're going to have to live in transparent domes, but eventually, you can transform Mars into an Earth-like planet. You can warm it up.
[The quick way to warm the planet] Drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles.
On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (September 9, 2015), as cited in "Elon Musk’s new idea: Nuke Mars" , CNN (September 11, 2015)
On the show, Stephen Colbert said he had been trying to decide whether Musk was a superhero or a supervillain, the exchange led him to conclude the latter. University of Colorado atmospheric and ocean sciences professor Brian Toon told the Los Angeles Times : "It seems possible to make it Earthlike, but there's a lot of barriers to overcome [...] Blowing up bombs is not a good one."
September 25, 2015 All Charged Up in Berlin in Handelsblatt
25 October 2015 Artificial intelligence: Should we be as terrified as Elon Musk and Bill Gates? in ZDNet

2016 [ edit ]

8 April 2016 SpaceX Dragon Headed to the ISS at NASA Post-Launch News Conference
8 March 2016 50-innovation-quotes-from-spacex-founder-elon-musk .
27 September 2016 "Elon Musk's Plan To Colonize Mars Gives Us The Sci-Fi Future We Crave: Now let's see if he can make it reality." Popular Science magazine
On "eyeing" for Mars, IAC 2016 meeting, presentation on sustainable Mars colonization.
Quoted in "Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century" (2021) by Tim Higgins

2017 [ edit ]

9 May 2017 Career advice from Elon Musk's latest TED interview, in one sentence at 2017 TED conference
3 October 2017 in DK Smithsonian, Journey: An Illustrated History of Travel , ISBN 978-1-4654-6414-9 (Page 343).
16 October 2017 in LinkedIn: What Elon Musk Taught Me About Growing A Business
19 November 2017 tweet
22 December 2017 tweet & tweet

2018 [ edit ]

12 February 2018 reaction to Falcon Heavy Launch
19 February 2018
15 July 2018 referring to British diver Vern Unsworth, who participated in the Tham Luang cave rescue . As quoted in Elon Musk calls British diver who helped rescue Thai schoolboys 'pedo guy' in Twitter outburst by Eleanor Busby, The Independent .
this tweet from Ryan Mac has Mac claim "I did not agree to go off the record, and he never asked." however the screenshot of the e-mail shows that Musk precedes this private e-mail to him with "Off the record"
4 September 2018 retort to Ryan Mac
6 September 2018 interview with Joe Rogan
7 September 2018 discussing simulation theory on #1169 of Joe Rogan Experience
7 September 2018 e-mail to Guardian , possibly repeated later on a Joe Rogan podcast
17 September 2018 regarding the BFR, during announcement of first private passenger on lunar mission
25 October 2018 tweet
25 November 2018 Axios , season 1, episode 4

2019 [ edit ]

22 April 2019 during the Tesla Autonomy Investor Day, at Tesla Headquarters in Palo Alto, CA
12 July 2019 in Time magazine article
Tweets (August 15, 2019), as cited in "Elon Musk Floats 'Nuke Mars' Idea Again (He Has T-Shirts)" , Space.com (August 17, 2019)
Nuke Mars refers to a continuous stream of very low fallout nuclear fusion explosions above the atmosphere to create artificial suns. Much like our sun, this would not cause Mars to become radioactive.
Tweets (August 20, 2019), as cited in "Nuke Mars? Elon Musk seems serious about plan to terraform the red planet" , NBC News (August 22, 2019, reprinted from Space.com)

"Starship Update" talk at the SpaceX facility in Boca Chica, Texas on September 28, 2019 [ edit ]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY&t=2303
During Q&A at the "Starship Update" presentation, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY&t=4807

2020 [ edit ]

30 April 2020 quote by Susan Walsh, “Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg Aren’t on the Same Page,” New York Times
7 May 2020 on podcast with Joe Rogan
21 June 2020 tweet and TechFilter
24 July 2020 tweet (archived)
21 September 2020 tweet

2021 [ edit ]

Said while giving tour of Starbase to Tim Dodd (July 30, 2021), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw
McSceeney and Pourahmadi are referencing David Beasley's interview on CNN's Connect the World with Becky Anderson
Musk included in this tweet a link to an 18 December 2015 article by Jonathan Bucks of Express
November 14, 2021 tweet about Bernie Sanders
“Elon Musk Claims He Will Pay More Than $11 Billion In Taxes This Year.” Forbes, Siladitya, (December 20, 2021) tweet on Dec. 19, 2021

2022 [ edit ]

Tweet (January. 27, 2022), as cited in "Musk calls Biden a 'damp sock puppet' and rants about Covid-19 restrictions: 'This is the path to tyranny'" The Independent (London, January 28, 2022)
Response to the COVID-19 pandemic .
"Musk Discusses War in Ukraine and Importance of Nuclear Power" , w:Business Insider (March 26, 2022)
Tweet (April 3, 2022), cited in "Is Elon Musk Trying to Populate Mars Himself?" New York magazine (July 7, 2022).
The total population of the world is now 8 billion.
"Elon Musk talks Twitter, Tesla and how his brain works" , TED2022 (April 14, 2022; at 19:39)
This is not a way to make money.... I don't care about the economics at all.
"Elon Musk launches hostile bid for Twitter claiming free-speech concerns", CBC (April 14, 2022)
April 22, 2022 reply to Bill Gates per Business Insider article
May 2, 2022 tweet
Elon Musk Says Apple's 30% App Store Fee is 'Literally 10 Times Higher Than It Should Be' in MacRumors (3 May 2022).
Tweet (July 7, 2022), as cited in "Elon Musk says he is 'doing his bit to help underpopulation' after fathering twins with executive" The Telegraph (July 7, 2022)
Tweet followed the birth of twins taking his reported number of children to 9.
Tweet (July 7, 2022), cited in "Is Elon Musk Trying to Populate Mars Himself?" New York magazine (July 7, 2022)
October 3, 2022 poll on Twitter - the voting options were 'yes' and 'no'
October 3, 2022 tweet
(October 3, 2022; 7:47pm) tweet
I play the fool on Twitter and often shoot myself in the foot and cause myself all sorts of trouble . . . I don't know, I find it vaguely therapeutic to express myself on Twitter. It's a way to get messages out to the public.
Something will happen to Earth eventually, it’s just a question of time. Eventually the sun will expand and destroy all life on Earth, so we do need to move at some point, or at least be a multi-planet species. [...] You have to ask the question: do we want to be a space-flying civilisation and a multi-planet species or not? [...] It's a question of what percentage of resources should we devote to such an endeavour? I think if you say 1 per cent of resources, that's probably a reasonable amount.
Interview comments cited in the "Elon Musk: 'Aren’t you entertained?'" , Financial Times (October 7, 2022)
Predicted dangerous changes in the Sun , as opposed to climate change caused by humans, are not considered likely to happen for 1 to 1.5 billion years.
Tweet (October 11, 2022), as cited in "Elon Musk denies report he spoke to Putin about use of nuclear weapons" , The Guardian (October 11, 2022)
It had been claimed Musk had spoken to Putin recently about Musk's peace plan which would have meant Ukraine accepting neutrality and Crimea being part of Russia, also stated objectives of the Russian government.
Elon Musk again claims one day Tesla will get bigger than Apple is today in AppleInsider (20 October 2022).
October 27, 2022 tweet
29 October 2022 response to Hilary Clinton regarding the Paul Pelosi attack, attested to October 30th by Axios , Elon linked to this October 29th story by the Santa Monica Observer. Elon deleted the tweet later that day, after news coverage like Rachel Sharp of The Independent , and apologized on January 28, 2023, after video of the incident was released to the public. tweet
tweet via Twitter (November 4, 2022)
November 7, 2022 tweet in response to Tom Fitton saying "I wonder if @ElonMusk's @Twitter has tortious interference claims against the Left activist groups which are causing damaging advertiser boycotts of the platform?"
November 7, 2022 tweet
November 20, 2022 tweet accompanying an image of a praying man captioned Donald Trump ignoring a woman censored by a Twitter logo
November 26, 2022 tweet
December 7, 2022 quoted in San Francisco investigating allegation that Twitter converted office space to bedrooms for workers by Noah Goldberg
December 8, 2022 "Wikipedia Founder Indirectly Tells Elon Musk the Site 'Is Not for Sale'" by Nikki Main
December 11, 2022 tweet
“All-In” podcast , theme of show, “all things” with Chamath Palihapitiva, co-host (December 27, 2022)

2023 [ edit ]

February 26, 2023 tweet about comments by cartoonist Scott Adams (26 February 2023), cited in article BBC News (February 27, 2023)
March 8, 2023 tweet
March 16, 2023 tweet
March 26, 2023 tweet referencing King Kong
April 14, 2023 tweet
Now you can still satisfy the limbic instinct but not procreate. So we haven't yet evolved to deal with that because this is all fairly recent in the last 50 years or so before birth control.
On Tucker Carlson Tonight (April 18, 2023), cited in "Elon Musk and "Tucker Carlson Tonight": A distracting match made in misinformation paradise" Salon (April 19, 2023)
Tweet (15 May 2023), as cited in "Elon Musk claims George Soros 'hates humanity.' The ADL says Musk's attacks 'will embolden extremists'" CNN (May 16, 2023)
In an earlier tweet, Musk had compared George Soros , a Jewish Holocaust survivor, to X-Men criminal Magneto , a Marvel comic book survivor of the Holocaust.
Interview on CNBC (May 16, 2023) as cited in "Elon Musk misquoted 'The Princess Bride' when asked why he keeps tweeting political opinions and antisemitic conspiracy theories: 'If we lose money, so be it'" Insider (17 May 2023)
In response to criticism over his tweets about George Soros
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1688022163574439937
I support Russell Brand. That man is not evil.
Tweets/posts on 'X', as cited in "The backers of Russell Brand claim ‘agenda’ lies behind allegations" , The Times (London, September 18, 2023)
Tweets/posts on 'X', as cited in [1] (September 19, 2023)
Musk says Starlink will support connectivity to aid organizations in Gaza (28 October, 2023)
Elon Musk says AI will eventually create a situation where 'no job is needed' (November 2, 2023)
Bill Gates teases the possibility of a 3-day work week where ‘machines can make all the food and stuff’ (November 23, 2023)
What this advertising boycott is going to do is, it is going to kill the company [...] And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company
From an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times Dealbook Summit (29 November 2023), as cited in "Elon Musk to Advertisers Who Left X: 'Go F*** Yourself'" , The Hollywood Reporter (29 November 2023)
At the same event , earlier in the day, Disney CEO Bob Iger had explained his reasons for ceasing to advertise on X (formerly known as Twitter).
January 4, 2024 Musk warns against invading Russia , The Press United.

Quotes about Musk [ edit ]

W:Thierry Breton Europe gives Elon Musk 24 hours to respond about Israel-Hamas war misinformation and violence on X, formerly Twitter (OCTOBER 11, 2023)
What happened next was extraordinary. Almost immediately, a number of notorious antisemitic accounts posted under the hashtag #BanTheADL . Musk boosted the campaign by liking a post by a far-right activist that called for banning the A.D.L. and then started his own campaign against the organization. In a series of posts on X , he blamed it for most of X's loss in advertising revenue, called the A.D.L. the biggest generator of antisemitism on X, proposed a poll on booting the A.D.L. from the platform and then threatened to sue the A.D.L. for defamation.
David French "Elon Musk’s Antisemitism Problem Isn’t About Free Speech" , The New York Times (10 September 2023)
Fiona Hill "Fiona Hill: 'Elon Musk Is Transmitting a Message for Putin'" , Politico (October 17, 2022).
In October, David Beasley , head of the U.N. food agency , tweeted a cheeky congratulations to Musk for reportedly earning $36 billion in a single day. "1/6 of your one-day increase would save 42 million lives that are knocking on famine's door," he wrote... Musk tweeted: "If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it." ...Beasley quickly clarified that his earlier tweet referred to feeding "people on the brink of starvation" and not solving world hunger, he invited Musk to meet "anywhere—Earth or space" to discuss the potential donation.
Joanne Lu "How $6 billion from Elon Musk could feed millions on the brink of famine" , NPR (November 11, 2021)
Russia's slant on the world appears to have penetrated Musk's mind and he is by far Bellingcat 's most famous detractor. Bellingcat's Twitter account has periodically disappeared from site searches and Musk himself often retweets conspiracy theories about the group.
Edward Luce "Bellingcat's Christo Grozev: 'Prigozhin will either be dead or there will be a second coup'" , Financial Times (11 August 2023)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Tweets quoted here (Novemeber 2022)

62 Motivational Elon Musk Quotes on Success and Leadership

Whether we’re talking about online payments, science, technology or space travel, the name Elon Musk must pop up in your mind.

Referred to as the Nikola Tesla of our generation, Elon Musk is an entrepreneur, business magnate, investor, engineer, and inventor. This guy definitely knows his way with money. He became a multimillionaire in his late 20s, when he sold his first start-up company, Zip2. Musk is revered for his revolutionary leadership style and his innovative practices, which are two skills that definitely makes Elon Musk quoteworthy.

RELATED: E lon Musk Now Owns Twitter, and 6 Other Facts – Is He the IRL Tony Stark?

The founder of SolarCity, Tesla, SpaceX and, now, Twitter , Elon Musk believes in humanity and wants to change the world, and this is not just wishful thinking. The man is actually working on reducing global warming and establishing a human colony on Mars to prevent human extinction. What more proof do you need to believe that everything you set your mind to is possible?

Here are 62 of the top Elon Musk quotes to make you start working on your dreams, no matter how impossible they might seem right now.

Elon Musk Quotes About Success

elon-musk-quote-first-step-something-is-possible

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

“when something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”, “i think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”, “some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.”, “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.”, “failure is an option here. if things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”, “persistence is very important. you should not give up unless you are forced to give up.”, “you have to say, ‘well, why did it succeed where others did not'”, “work like hell. i mean you just have to put in 80- to 100-hour weeks every week. [this] improves the odds of success . if other people are putting in 40-hour workweeks and you’re putting in 100-hour workweeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.”, elon musk quotes about leadership, “if you’re a 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.”, “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 say something, and then it usually happens. maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.”, “i don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; i spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.”, “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.”, “i’ve actually not read any books on time management. “, elon musk quotes about growing a company, “i don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.”, “i think the best way to attract venture capital is to try and come up with a demonstration of whatever product or service it is and ideally take that as far as you can. just see if you can sell that to real customers and start generating some momentum. the further along you can get with that, the more likely you are to get funding.”, “i don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.”, “starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive, and determination of the people behind it as the product they sell.”, “there are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. one is you need economies of scale. the other is you need to iterate on the design. you need to go through a few versions.”, “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.”, “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.”, elon musk quotes about 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.”, “i’m interested in things that change the world or that affect the future and wondrous, new technology where you see it, and you’re like, ‘wow, how did that even happen how is that possible'”, “really pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends… hardly anyone does that, and it’s incredibly helpful.”, “when somebody has a breakthrough innovation, it is rarely one little thing. very rarely, is it one little thing. it’s usually a whole bunch of things that collectively amount to a huge innovation.”, “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.”, elon musk quotes about risk-taking.

“I take the position that I’m always to some degree wrong, and the aspiration is to be less wrong.”

“there’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.”, “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.”, “it’s ok to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”, elon musk quotes that provide life lessons, “you shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. they need to be… better.”, “i’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and fries my nervous system.”, “it’s very important to like the people you work with, otherwise life [and] your job is gonna be quite miserable.”.

“As much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs. MBA programs don’t teach people how to create companies.”

“it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”, “don’t delude yourself into thinking something’s working when it’s not, or you’re gonna get fixated on a bad solution.”, “if something has to be designed and invented, and you have to figure out how to ensure that the value of the thing you create is greater than the cost of the inputs, then that is probably my core skill.”, “i always have optimism, but i’m realistic. it was not with the expectation of great success that i started tesla or spacex … it’s just that i thought they were important enough to do anyway.”, “patience is a virtue, and i’m learning patience. it’s a tough lesson. life is too short for long-term grudges.”, funny elon musk quotes, “i would like to die on mars. just not on impact.”, “everybody around here has slides in their lobbies. i’m actually wondering about putting in a roller coaster — like a functional roller coaster at the factory in fremont. you’d get in, and it would take you around [the] factory but also up and down. who else has a roller coaster … it would probably be really expensive, but i like the idea of it.”, “[when ford blocked tesla’s model, musk said,] like why did you go steal tesla’s e like you’re some sort of fascist army marching across the alphabet, some sort of sesame street robber”, “so next i went to russia three times, in late 2001 and 2002, to see if i could negotiate the purchase of two icbms [missiles]. without the nukes, obviously.”, “where are the aliens’ really odd that we see no sign of them. btw, please don’t mention the pyramids. stacking stone blocks is not evidence of an advanced civilization. the rumor that i’m building a spaceship to get back to my home planet mars is totally untrue. the ancient egyptians were amazing, but if aliens built the pyramids, they would’ve left behind a computer or something.”, “i would like to allocate more time to dating, though. i need to find a girlfriend. that’s why i need to carve out just a little more time. i think maybe even another five to 10 — how much time does a woman want a week maybe 10 hours that’s kind of the minimum i don’t know.”, “in the distant future, people may outlaw driving cars because it’s too dangerous. you can’t have a person driving a two-ton death machine.”, “we could definitely make a flying car — but that’s not the hard part… the hard part is, how do you make a flying car that’s super safe and quiet because if it’s a howler, you’re going to make people very unhappy.”, “we have essentially no patents in spacex. our primary long-term competition is in china — if we published patents, it would be farcical, because the chinese would just use them as a recipe book.”, elon musk quotes for entrepreneurs, “people should pursue what they’re passionate about. that will make them happier than pretty much anything else.”, “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.”, “my biggest mistake is probably] weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality.”, “my motivation for all my companies has been to be involved in something that i thought would have a significant impact on the world.”, “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.”, “what makes innovative thinking happen… i think it’s really a mindset. you have to decide.”, “i really like negative feedback, because it makes me aware of my mistakes to correct them immediately and learn from them at the same time.”, “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.”, “i think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.”, “being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.”.

“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.”

“brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. but brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.”.

motivational

Flavia Medrut is a freelance writer, researcher and part-time psychologist. She believes music, long walks and a good sense of humor are imperative in keeping one’s sanity.

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50 Rare Elon Musk Quotes to Revolutionize Your Perspective

Random + Awesome Science & Technology book

Below you will find what we consider to be the best 50 Elon Musk quotes of all time. These quotes were hand picked by us. We dug through hundreds of hours of video, audio, and interviews from Elon Musk to find a collection that is as rare as it is dazzling.

I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad. — Elon Musk

Who really knows what goes on in the mind of Elon Musk, apart from the man himself?

How does he look back upon his achievements? How wild did his dreams become after experiencing his power to shape the world? Does he ever feel afraid?

Elon is a South African-born entrepreneur, who, through his undeniable success, has become something of a real-life sci-fi visionary hero. Having played monumental roles in Space X, Tesla, PayPal, SolarCity, Neuralink, and The Boring Company — his resume continues to expand year after year.

What made him who he is now? We gathered the greatest Elon Musk quotes to give you a peek into the profoundly revolutionary psyche of this legend. Enjoy!

Elon Musk Quotes on Learning & Logic

1. the importance of asking the right questions..

“[The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy] taught me that the tough thing is figuring out what questions to ask, but that once you do that, the rest is really easy. I came to the conclusion that we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment .”

2. Being where the action is.

“Whenever I’d read about cool technology, it’d tend to be in the United States or, more broadly, North America. […] I kind of wanted to be where the cutting edge of technology was, and of course within the United States, Silicon Valley is where the heart of things is. Although, at the time, I didn’t know where Silicon Valley was. It sounded like some mythical place.”

3. Obsessing over ideas.

“She said the first question I asked her was, ‘Do you ever think about electric cars?’ She said no, she never does. It wasn’t great. Recently [the line] has been more effective.”

4. Deciding what work to do.

“When I was in college, I just thought, ‘Well, what are the things that are most likely to affect the future of humanity at a macro level?’ And it just seemed like there would be the Internet, sustainable energy, making life multi-planetary, and then genetics and AI.”

5. Being a part of the web revolution.

“It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I want to make a bunch of money.’ […] With the internet, anyone who had a connection anywhere in the world would have access to all the world’s information, just like a nervous system. Humanity was effectively becoming a super organism and qualitatively different than what it had been before , and so I wanted to be part of that.”

6. Motivating students and accelerated learning.

“The best teacher I ever had was my elementary school principal. Our math teacher quit for some reason, and he decided to sub in himself for math and accelerate the syllabus by a year. We had to work like the house was on fire for the first half of the lesson and do extra homework, but then we got to hear stories of when he was a soldier in WWII. If you didn’t do the work, you didn’t get to hear the stories. Everybody did the work. ”

7. Critical thinking and filter bubbles.

“ Do you have the right axioms, are they relevant, and are you making the right conclusions based on those axioms? That’s the essence of critical thinking, and yet it is amazing how often people fail to do that. I think wishful thinking is innate in the human brain. You want things to be the way you wish them to be, and so you tend to filter information that you shouldn’t filter.”

8. First principles thinking and reasoning by analogy.

“I do think a good framework for thinking is physics, you know, the first principles reasoning. What I mean by that is boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there as opposed to reasoning by analogy. Through most of our life, we get through life by reasoning by analogy, which essentially means kind of copying what other people do with slight variations. And you have to do that, otherwise mentally you wouldn’t be able to get through the day. But when you want to do something new, you have to apply the physics approach. Physics has really figured out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics; it’s really counterintuitive.”

9. Answer the ‘why’ of education.

“A lot of kids are in school puzzled as to why they’re there. I think if you can explain the ‘why’ of things, then that makes a huge difference to people’s motivation. Then they understand purpose.”

10. Learning more than you think you can.

“I do kinda feel like my head is full! My context-switching penalty is high, and my process isolation is not what it used to be. Frankly, though, I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying. One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree–make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e., the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”

11. On being dedicated to learning something new.

“I never had a job where I made anything physical. I cofounded two Internet software companies, Zip2 and PayPal. So it took me a few years to kind of learn rocket science, if you will. I had to learn how you make hardware. I’d never seen a CNC machine or laid out carbon fibre. I didn’t know any of these things. But if you read books and talk to experts, you’ll pick it up pretty quickly. […] It’s really pretty straightforward. Just read books and talk to people–particularly books. The data rate of reading is much greater than when somebody’s talking. “You can learn whatever you need to do to start a successful business either in school or out of school. A school, in theory, should help accelerate that process, and I think oftentimes it does. It can be an efficient learning process, perhaps more efficient than empirically learning lessons. There are examples of successful entrepreneurs who never graduated high school, and there are those that have PhD’s. I think the important principle is to be dedicated to learning what you need to know, whether that is in school or empirically.”

12. Structured format of grade school.

“It shouldn’t be that you’ve got these grades where people move in lockstep and everyone goes through English, math, science, and so forth from fifth grade to sixth grade to seventh grade like it’s an assembly line. People are not objects on an assembly line. That’s a ridiculous notion. People learn and are interested in different things at different paces. You really want to disconnect the whole grade-level thing from the subjects. Allow people to progress at the fastest pace that they can or are interested in, in each subject. It seems like a really obvious thing.”

13. The value of the truth.

“I care a lot about the truth of things and trying to understand the truth of things. I think that’s important. If you’re going to come up with some solution, then the truth is really, really important. ”

Elon Musk Quotes on Business

14. aim for utility..

“It’s better to approach this [building a company] from the standpoint of saying–rather than you want to be an entrepreneur or you want to make money– what are some useful things that you do that you wish existed in the world? ”

15. The value of profit.

“I think the profit motive is a good one if the rules of an industry are properly set up. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with profit. In fact, profit just means that people are paying you more for whatever you’re doing that you’re spending to create it. That’s a good thing. ”

16. Creating a compelling company.

“Fundamentally, if you don’t have a compelling product at a compelling price, you don’t have a great company. ”

17. 40-hour workweek.

“You’re not going to create revolutionary cars or rockets on 40 hours a week. It just won’t work. Colonizing Mars isn’t going to happen on 40 hours a week.”

18. Approving and executing on ideas.

“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.”

19. Creating companies.

“I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.”

20. Having good people.

“A small group of very technically strong people will always beat a large group of moderately strong people.”

21. Personality matters.

“The biggest mistake in general that I’ve made–and I’m trying to correct for that–is to put too much of a weighting on somebody’s talent and not enough on their personality […]. It actually matters whether somebody has a good heart. It really does. And I’ve made the mistake of thinking that sometimes it’s just about the brain.”

22. The ‘Special Forces’ management approach.

“I want to accentuate the philosophy that I have with companies in the startup phase, which is a sort of ‘special forces’ approach. The minimum passing grade is excellent. That’s the way I believe startup companies need to be if they’re ultimately going to be large and successful companies. We’d adhered to that to some degree, but we’d strayed from that path in a few places. That doesn’t mean the people that we let go on that basis would be considered bad–it’s just the difference between Special Forces and regular Army. If you’re going to get through a really tough environment and ultimately grow the company to something significant, you have to have a very high level of dedication and talent throughout the organization. “

23. CEO involvement in companies.

“I’m head engineer and chief designer as well as CEO [at SpaceX], so I don’t have to cave to some money guy. I encounter CEOs who don’t know the details of their technology and that’s ridiculous to me. “

24. Focusing on the competition.

“We don’t think too much about what competitors are doing because I think it’s important to be focused on making the best possible products. It’s maybe analogous to what they say about if you’re in a race: don’t worry about what the other runners are doing–just run. ”

25. Tolerance of innovation and failure.

“There’s no map. By its nature, it’s unknown, which means you’re going to make false moves. It must be OK to make false moves. ”

26. Soliciting feedback.

“ Always solicit critical feedback, particularly from friends. Because, generally, they will be thinking it, but they won’t tell you.”

27. Brands as perception.

“Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product. “

28. On how close companies come to failure.

“I certainly have lost many battles. So far, I have not lost a war, but I’ve certainly lost many battles […] more than I can count, probably. We came very close to both companies not succeeding in 2008. We had three failures of the SpaceX rocket, so we were 0 for 3. We had the crazy financial recession, the Great Recession. The Tesla financing round was falling apart because it’s pretty hard to raise money for a startup car company if GM and Chrysler are going bankrupt. […] Fortunately at the end of 2008, the fourth launch, which was the last launch we had money for, worked for SpaceX, and we loved the Tesla financing round Christmas Eve 2008, the last hour of the last day that it was possible. ”

29. Key to success.

“Start somewhere and then really be prepared to question your assumptions, fix what you did wrong, and adapt to reality. ”

Read this: What I Learned About the Future By Reading 100 Science Fiction Books

Image via SpaceX

Elon Musk Quotes on Innovation, Technology, Future

30. innovation should evolve..

“ It’s important to create an environment that fosters innovation, but you want to let it evolve in a Darwinian way. You don’t want to, at a high level, at a gut level, pick a technology and decide that that’s the thing that’s going to win because it may not be. You should really let things evolve.”

31. Doing something disruptive.

“I do think it’s worth thinking about whether what you’re doing is going to result in disruptive change or not. If it’s just incremental, it’s unlikely to be something major. It’s got to be something that’s substantially better than what’s gone on before. ”

32. On being useful.

“I don’t think everything needs to change the world, you know. […] Just say: ‘ Is what I’m doing as useful as it could be? ’ ””Whatever this thing is that you’re trying to create, what would be the utility delta compared to the current state of the art times how many people it would affect? That’s why I think having something that makes a big difference but affects a small to moderate number of people is great, as is something that makes even a small different but affects a vast number of people. “

33. AI in the future.

“I think AI is going to be incredibly sophisticated in 20 years. It seems to be accelerating. The tricky thing about predicting things when there is an exponential is that an exponential looks linear close-up. But actually, it’s not linear. And AI appears to be accelerating, as far as I can see.”

34. On OpenAI.

“It’s not as though I think the risk is that the AI would develop all on its own right off the bat. The concern is that someone may use it in a way that is bad, and even if they weren’t going to use it in a way that is bad, somebody would take it from them and use it in a way that’s bad. That, I think, is quite a big danger. We must have democratization of AI technology and make it widely available. That’s the reason [we] created OpenAI. There’s a quote that I love from Lord Acton–he was the guy who came up with, ‘Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’–which is that ‘freedom consists of the distribution of power and despotism in its concretion. ’ I think it’s important if we have this incredibly powerful AI that it not be concentrated in the hands of the few. ”

35. Approaching the singularity.

“Creating a neural lace is the thing that really matters for humanity to achieve symbiosis with machines.”

36. We are cyborgs.

“We’re already a cyborg. You have a digital version of yourself or partial version of yourself online in the form of your e-mails and your social media and all the things that you do. And you have, basically, superpowers with your computer and your phone and the applications that are there. You have more power than the president of the United States had 20 years ago. You can answer any question; you can video conference with anyone anywhere; you can send a message to millions of people instantly. You just do incredible things.”

37. On autonomous vehicles.

“ The reality is that autonomous systems will drive orders of magnitude better than people. In terms of accidents per mile, it’ll be far lower. Technologically, I think it’s about three years away for full autonomy.” [2015]“Owning a car that is not self-driving, in the long term, will be like owning a horse–you would own it and use it for sentimental reasons but not for daily use.”

38. The value of tunnels.

“The fundamental problem with cities is that we build cities in 3D. You’ve got these tall buildings with lots of people on each floor, but then you’ve got roads, which are 2D. That obviously just doesn’t work. You’re guaranteed to have gridlock. But you can go 3D if you have tunnels. And you can have many tunnels crisscrossing each other with maybe a few meters of vertical distance between them and completely get rid of traffic problems.”

39. Orbital synchronization of Earth and Mars.

“ You can only go there every two years because the orbital synchronization of Earth and Mars is about every two years. but I think it would be an interesting way for the civilization to develop. People would meet each other and be like, ‘What orbital synchronization did you arrive on?’”

40. In a simulated reality.

“Hope we’re not just the biological boot loader for digital superintelligence. Unfortunately, that is increasingly probable.”

41. Civilization-level decline of technology.

“What a lot of people don’t appreciate is that technology does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of really strong engineering talent is applied to the problem. […] There are many examples in history where civilizations have reached a certain technology level and that have fallen well below that and then recovered only millennia later.”

42. Breakthrough innovations.

“When somebody has a breakthrough innovation, it is rarely one little thing. Very rarely, is it one little thing. It’s usually a whole bunch of things that collectively amount to a huge innovation. ”

Miscellaneous Musk Quotes

43. embrace change..

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

44. Self-investment.

“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. ”

45. Work harder.

“Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour workweeks and you’re putting in 100 hour workweeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve. If there was a way that I could not eat, so I could work more, I would not eat. I wish there was a way to get nutrients without sitting down for a meal.”

46. Everyone has fear.

“I wouldn’t say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and fries my nervous system. ”

47. Doing things anyways.

“I always have optimism, but I’m realistic. It was not with the expectation of great success that I started Tesla or SpaceX. […] It’s just that I thought they were important enough to do anyway. ”

48. Environmental catastrophe.

“We’re running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere […] can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.”

49. Inhabiting Mars.

“You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on. […] So it’s a fixer-upper of a planet.”

50. Development of human consciousness.

“From an evolutionary standpoint, human consciousness has not been around very long. A little light just went on after four and a half billion years. How often does that happen? Maybe it is quite rare.”

I hope you enjoyed this collection of Elon Musk Quotes. If you did, check out his biography below.

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Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance

If you enjoyed the aforementioned quotes, Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance is an incredible story to fill your thirst for more inspiration. Chalk full of explanations, quotes, and discussions from the man himself, this book will keep you reading until the last page.

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The 22 most memorable quotes from the new Elon Musk book, ranked

For anyone interested in technology, entrepreneurship or the price of greatness, Ashlee Vance’s new book, “ Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future ,” is a tremendous look into arguably the world’s most important entrepreneur.

Vance paints an unforgettable picture of Musk’s unique personality, insatiable drive and ability to thrive through hardship. The book bursts with telling anecdotes and quotes that illuminate who Musk is. Here are some that stood out:

1. “I do think of him as the Terminator. He locks his gaze on to something and says, ‘It shall be mine.’ Bit by bit, he won me over.” — Justine Musk, Elon’s ex-wife

2. “We’re all hanging out in this cabana at the Hard Rock Cafe, and Elon is there reading some obscure Soviet rocket manual that was all moldy and looked like it had been bought on eBay.” — Kevin Hartz, an early PayPal investor, describing an outing in Las Vegas that was intended as a time to celebrate the company’s success.

3. “He’s kind of homeless, which I think is sort of funny. He’ll e-mail and say, ‘I don’t know where to stay tonight. Can I come over?’ I haven’t given him a key or anything yet.” — Google chief executive Larry Page on Elon Musk, who owns a home in Los Angeles but doesn’t have a place in Silicon Valley, which he visits weekly for his work at Tesla.

4. “Elon said ‘I will spend my last dollar on these companies. If we have to move into Justine’s parents’ basement, we’ll do it.’ ” — Antonio Gracias recalling a dinner with Musk during the 2008 financial crisis.

[ Why shades of Asperger’s Syndrome are the secret to building a great tech company ]

5. “I believe the second sentence out of his mouth was, ‘I think a lot about electric cars.’ And then he turned to me and said, ‘Do you think about electric cars?’ ” — Christie Nicholson, the daughter of an adviser to Elon Musk, recalling first meeting Musk at a party. As a college student he was already hooked on electric cars.

6. “My mentality is that of a samurai. I would rather commit seppuku than fail.” — Elon Musk explaining himself to a potential investor.

Update, May 12: Since publication of this article Musk has said he has never called himself a samurai .

7. “That is no excuse. I am extremely disappointed. You need to figure out where your priorities are. We’re changing the world and changing history, and you either commit or you don’t.” — an anonymous Tesla employee recalling an e-mail from Musk after missing an event to witness the birth of his child.

Update, May 12: Musk has since called this inaccurate and said he would never tell someone to miss a child’s birth for a meeting.

8. “That’s my lesson for taking a vacation: vacation will kill you.” — Elon Musk, who nearly died in 2000 from a malaria infection following a trip to Brazil and South Africa.

9. “I would like to allocate more time to dating, though. I need to find a girlfriend. That’s why I need to carve out just a little more time. I think maybe even another five to 10 — how much time does a woman want a week? Maybe 10 hours? That’s kind of the minimum? I don’t know.” — Elon Musk

10. “Like why did you go steal Tesla’s E? Like you’re some sort of fascist army marching across the alphabet, some sort of Sesame Street robber?” — Elon Musk, recalling his complaint to Ford’s then chief executive Alan Mulally, about blocking Tesla from using the name Model E.

11. “They got my best [expletive] friend to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up. And that [expletive] hurt. For some reason they decided that I was it, and they were going to go after me nonstop. That’s what made growing up difficult. For a number of years there was no respite. You get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the [expletive] out of me, and then I’d come home, and it would just be awful there as well.” — Elon Musk, who said he was hospitalized after one beating and couldn’t return to school for a week. He was living with his father, who was said to delight in being hard on his sons.

[ Crazy good: How mental illnesses help entrepreneurs thrive ]

12. “He goes into his brain, and then you just see he is in another world. He still does that. Now I just leave him be because I know he is designing a new rocket or something.” — Elon Musk’s mother describing how as a child Elon sometimes seemed to drift off into trances. He wouldn’t respond when spoken to and would have a distant look in his eyes. Musk’s parents and physicians thought maybe he was deaf and removed his adenoid glands thinking that would improve his hearing. It made no difference.

13. “Everybody around here has slides in their lobbies. I’m actually wondering about putting in a roller coaster — like a functional roller coaster at the factory in Fremont. You’d get in, and it would take you around [the] factory but also up and down. Who else has a roller coaster? … It would probably be really expensive, but I like the idea of it.” — Elon Musk

14. “I wanted him to meet me behind security so he couldn’t pack a gun.” — Jim Cantrell, describing his first meeting with Elon Musk. Cantrell was once accused of espionage by Russians, so he was fearful when he received a call from a stranger with an accent asking to help him with a space program. They met in an airport, hit it off, and would later travel to Russia hoping to buy rockets.

15. “I would tell those people they will get to see their families a lot when we go bankrupt.” — Ryan Popple recalling Musk’s retort when an employee complained in Tesla’s early days that they were working too hard.

16. “One night he told me, ‘If there was a way that I could not eat, so I could work more, I would not eat. I wish there was a way to get nutrients without sitting down for a meal.’ ” — Nicholson

17. “My family fears that the Russians will assassinate me.” — Elon Musk

18. “We all worked 20 hours a day, and he worked 23 hours.” — Julie Ankenbrandt on working with Musk at the start-up X.com, which would later merge with Confinity and lead to what we know as PayPal.

19. “I remember him saying, ‘Being with me was choosing the hard path.’ I didn’t quite understand at the time, but I do now. It’s quite hard, quite the crazy ride.” — Talulah Riley, who has twice been divorced from Musk.

20. “I remember thinking it was a lot of drama, and that if I was going to put up with it, we might as well be married. I told him he should just propose to me.” — Justine Musk recalling an argument with Elon while walking near the X.com offices. After calming down he proposed on the sidewalk.

21. “I’d seen him before, but did worry that maybe he could have an off day. Still, I thought, he would maybe hit one gonad but not both.” — Elon Musk, discussing how he held balloons in his hands and between his legs at one of his birthday parties, and let a knife thrower pop the balloons.

22. “We’ve grown [expletive] soft.” — Elon Musk, after Vance noted that hundreds of people were working at Tesla’s headquarters on a Saturday.

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This impressionistic illustration, composed of black ink and brushstrokes with accents of yellow and pink, shows Elon Musk’s face close-up. He is gazing at the viewer, his square jaw and high forehead immediately recognizable.

Elon Musk Wants to Save Humanity. The Only Problem: People.

Walter Isaacson’s biography of the billionaire entrepreneur depicts a mercurial “man-child” with grandiose ambitions and an ego to match.

Credit... Illustration by Jan Robert Dünnweller; Photo reference by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images

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By Jennifer Szalai

Published Sept. 9, 2023 Updated Sept. 11, 2023
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ELON MUSK , by Walter Isaacson

At various moments in “Elon Musk,” Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the world’s richest person , the author tries to make sense of the billionaire entrepreneur he has shadowed for two years — sitting in on meetings, getting a peek at emails and texts, engaging in “scores of interviews and late-night conversations.” Musk is a mercurial “man-child,” Isaacson writes, who was bullied relentlessly as a kid in South Africa until he grew big enough to beat up his bullies. Musk talks about having Asperger’s, which makes him “bad at picking up social cues.” As the people closest to him will attest, he lacks empathy — something that Isaacson describes as a “gene” that’s “hard-wired.”

Yet even as Musk struggles to relate to the actual humans around him, his plans for humanity are grand. “A fully reusable rocket is the difference between being a single-planet civilization and being a multiplanet one”: Musk would “maniacally” repeat this message to his staff at SpaceX, his spacecraft and satellite company, where every decision is motivated by his determination to get earthlings to Mars. He pushes employees at his companies — he now runs six, including X, the platform formerly known as Twitter — to slash costs and meet brutal deadlines because he needs to pour resources into the moonshot of colonizing space “before civilization crumbles.” Disaster could come from climate change, from declining birthrates, from artificial intelligence. Isaacson describes Musk stalking the factory floor of Tesla, his electric car company, issuing orders on the fly. “If I don’t make decisions,” Musk explained, “we die.”

By “we,” Musk presumably meant Tesla in that instance. But Musk likes to speak of his business interests in superhero terms, so it’s sometimes hard to be sure. Isaacson, whose previous biographical subjects include Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs, is a patient chronicler of obsession; in the case of Musk, he can occasionally seem too patient — a hazard for any biographer who is given extraordinary access. At one point, Isaacson asks why Musk is so offended by anything he deems politically correct, and Musk, as usual, has to dial it up to 11. “Unless the woke-mind virus, which is fundamentally anti-science, anti-merit and anti-human in general, is stopped,” he declares, “civilization will never become multiplanetary.” There are a number of curious assertions in that sentence, but it would have been nice if Isaacson had pushed him to answer a basic question: What on earth does any of it even mean?

Isaacson has ably conveyed that Musk doesn’t truly like pushback. Some of his lieutenants insist that he will eventually listen to reason, but Isaacson sees firsthand Musk’s habit of deriding as a saboteur or an idiot anyone who resists him. The musician Grimes, the mother of three of Musk’s children (the existence of the third, Techno Mechanicus, nicknamed Tau, has been kept private until now), calls his roiling anger “demon mode” — a mind-set that “causes a lot of chaos.” She also insists that it allows him to get stuff done.

It’s a convenient assessment, one that Isaacson seems mostly to accept. “As Shakespeare teaches us,” he writes, “all heroes have flaws, some tragic, some conquered, and those we cast as villains can be complex.” Well, yes — but couldn’t this describe anyone? What is there to say specifically about Musk himself?

The cover of “Elon Musk” is a close-up color photograph of Musk’s face. He is resting his chin against his steepled fingers and looking straight ahead.

For that we can turn to Isaacson’s reporting, of which there is plenty. (Another thoroughly reported biography, by Ashlee Vance , was published in 2015 — four years before SpaceX started launching Starlink satellites and seven years before Musk acquired Twitter.) Isaacson even managed to get Errol, Elon’s intermittently estranged father, to talk — though mostly what Errol offers are rambling bigoted comments (while insisting he isn’t racist) and self-aggrandizing tales (at least one of which turns out to be “provably false”).

Errol has two children with his stepdaughter. As for Elon, he has 10 children with three women, one of whom — Shivon Zilis, who bore his twins in 2021 — is an executive at one of his companies. (Another child, Musk’s first, born in 2002, died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome when he was 10 weeks old.)

“He really wants smart people to have kids,” Zilis said of Musk, who offered to be her sperm donor so that, Isaacson adds, “the kids would be genetically his.” At the time, Grimes and Musk were expecting their second child, a girl. Musk didn’t tell Grimes that he had just had twins with one of his employees.

But the details of such domestic intrigues are, in the book and in Musk’s life, largely beside the point. He is mostly preoccupied with his businesses, where he expects his staff to abide by “the algorithm,” his workplace creed, which commands them to “question every requirement” from a department, including “the legal department” and “the safety department”; and to “delete any part or process” they can. “Comradery is dangerous,” is one of the corollaries. So is this: “The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.”

Still, Musk has accrued enough power to dictate his own rules. In one of the book’s biggest scoops, Isaacson describes Musk secretly instructing his engineers to “turn off” Starlink satellite internet coverage to prevent Ukraine from launching a surprise drone attack on Russian forces in Crimea. ( Isaacson has since posted on X that contrary to what he writes in the book, Musk didn’t shut down coverage but denied a request to extend the network’s range.) Musk decided that he was saving humanity from a nuclear war. When Ukraine’s vice prime minister texted him to say that Starlink service was “a matter of life and death,” Musk instructed him to “seek peace while you have the upper hand.”

Counseling the Ukrainians to “seek peace” sounds especially rich coming from someone who is “energized,” Isaacson says, by “dire threats.” But then the overall sense you get from this biography is that for all of Musk’s talk about the world-changing magic of “the algorithm,” he ultimately does what he wants. He will order his companies to scrimp fanatically on some things while insisting that they spend lavishly on others. At Tesla, Musk’s obsession with the minutiae of automotive design inflated costs and drained the company of cash. At SpaceX, instead of spending $1,500 for the kind of latch used by NASA, an engineer figured out how to modify a $30 latch intended for a bathroom stall. When Musk acquired Twitter last year, he eliminated 75 percent of the staff.

Since Musk’s acquisition, hate speech on the platform has proliferated while ad sales have plunged . Reading this book, one begins to wonder if the old bird-site will be Musk’s Waterloo. “He thought of it as a technology company,” Isaacson writes, “when in fact it was an advertising medium based on human emotions and relationships.” Isaacson believes that Musk wanted to buy Twitter because he had been so bullied as a kid and “now he could own the playground.” It’s an awkward metaphor, but that’s also what makes it perfect. Owning a playground won’t stop you from getting bullied. If you think about it, owning a playground won’t get you much of anything at all.

Jennifer Szalai is the nonfiction book critic for The Times. More about Jennifer Szalai

The World of Elon Musk

The billionaire’s portfolio includes the world’s most valuable automaker, an innovative rocket company and plenty of drama..

SpaceX: President Biden wants companies that use American airspace for rocket launches to start paying taxes into a federal fund that finances the work of air traffic controllers.

Tesla: The maker of electric vehicles appeared to be losing command of the market it effectively created after reporting a stunning drop in quarterly sales , raising fresh questions about Elon Musk’s leadership of the company.

Business With China : Tesla and China built a symbiotic relationship that made Elon Musk ultrarich. Now, his reliance on the country may give Beijing leverage .

A Testy Interview: In the wake of a rough interview with Elon Musk that touched upon Donald Trump, his reported drug use and hate speech on X, the former television anchor Don Lemon said that his deal for a new talk show on X was called off just days before it was scheduled to air.

The Musk Foundation: After making billions in tax-deductible donations to his charity, Musk has failed recently to donate the minimum required to justify a tax break — and what he did give often supported his interests.

OpenAI: Musk, who helped found the A.I. start-up in 2015, has filed a lawsuit accusing the company and its chief executive of breaching a contract by putting profits and commercial interests ahead of the public good.

South African entrepreneur Elon Musk is known for founding Tesla Motors and SpaceX, which launched a landmark commercial spacecraft in 2012.

Who Is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk is a South African-born American entrepreneur and businessman who founded X.com in 1999 (which later became PayPal), SpaceX in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003. Musk became a multimillionaire in his late 20s when he sold his start-up company, Zip2, to a division of Compaq Computers.

In January 2021, Musk reportedly surpassed Jeff Bezos as the wealthiest man in the world.

Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. As a child, Musk was so lost in his daydreams about inventions that his parents and doctors ordered a test to check his hearing.

At about the time of his parents’ divorce, when he was 10, Musk developed an interest in computers. He taught himself how to program, and when he was 12 he sold his first software: a game he created called Blastar.

In grade school, Musk was short, introverted and bookish. He was bullied until he was 15 and went through a growth spurt and learned how to defend himself with karate and wrestling.

Musk’s mother, Maye Musk , is a Canadian model and the oldest woman to star in a Covergirl campaign. When Musk was growing up, she worked five jobs at one point to support her family.

Musk’s father, Errol Musk, is a wealthy South African engineer.

Musk spent his early childhood with his brother Kimbal and sister Tosca in South Africa. His parents divorced when he was 10.

At age 17, in 1989, Musk moved to Canada to attend Queen’s University and avoid mandatory service in the South African military. Musk obtained his Canadian citizenship that year, in part because he felt it would be easier to obtain American citizenship via that path.

In 1992, Musk left Canada to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with an undergraduate degree in economics and stayed for a second bachelor’s degree in physics.

After leaving Penn, Musk headed to Stanford University in California to pursue a PhD in energy physics. However, his move was timed perfectly with the Internet boom, and he dropped out of Stanford after just two days to become a part of it, launching his first company, Zip2 Corporation in 1995. Musk became a U.S. citizen in 2002.

Zip2 Corporation

Musk launched his first company, Zip2 Corporation, in 1995 with his brother, Kimbal Musk. An online city guide, Zip2 was soon providing content for the new websites of both The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune . In 1999, a division of Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options.

In 1999, Elon and Kimbal Musk used the money from their sale of Zip2 to found X.com, an online financial services/payments company. An X.com acquisition the following year led to the creation of PayPal as it is known today.

In October 2002, Musk earned his first billion when PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. Before the sale, Musk owned 11 percent of PayPal stock.

Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, in 2002 with the intention of building spacecraft for commercial space travel. By 2008, SpaceX was well established, and NASA awarded the company the contract to handle cargo transport for the International Space Station—with plans for astronaut transport in the future—in a move to replace NASA’s own space shuttle missions.

Tech Giants: Elon way from home. Elon Musk, an entrepreneur and inventor known for founding the private space-exploration corporation SpaceX, as well as co-founding Tesla Motors and Paypal, poses for a portrait in Los Angeles, California, on July 25, 2008.

Falcon 9 Rockets

On May 22, 2012, Musk and SpaceX made history when the company launched its Falcon 9 rocket into space with an unmanned capsule. The vehicle was sent to the International Space Station with 1,000 pounds of supplies for the astronauts stationed there, marking the first time a private company had sent a spacecraft to the International Space Station. Of the launch, Musk was quoted as saying, "I feel very lucky. ... For us, it's like winning the Super Bowl."

In December 2013, a Falcon 9 successfully carried a satellite to geosynchronous transfer orbit, a distance at which the satellite would lock into an orbital path that matched the Earth's rotation. In February 2015, SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 fitted with the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite, aiming to observe the extreme emissions from the sun that affect power grids and communications systems on Earth.

In March 2017, SpaceX saw the successful test flight and landing of a Falcon 9 rocket made from reusable parts, a development that opened the door for more affordable space travel.

A setback came in November 2017, when an explosion occurred during a test of the company's new Block 5 Merlin engine. SpaceX reported that no one was hurt, and that the issue would not hamper its planned rollout of a future generation of Falcon 9 rockets.

The company enjoyed another milestone moment in February 2018 with the successful test launch of the powerful Falcon Heavy rocket. Armed with additional Falcon 9 boosters, the Falcon Heavy was designed to carry immense payloads into orbit and potentially serve as a vessel for deep space missions. For the test launch, the Falcon Heavy was given a payload of Musk's cherry-red Tesla Roadster, equipped with cameras to "provide some epic views" for the vehicle's planned orbit around the sun.

In July 2018, Space X enjoyed the successful landing of a new Block 5 Falcon rocket, which touched down on a drone ship less than 9 minutes after liftoff.

BFR Mission to Mars

In September 2017, Musk presented an updated design plan for his BFR (an acronym for either "Big F---ing Rocket" or "Big Falcon Rocket"), a 31-engine behemoth topped by a spaceship capable of carrying at least 100 people. He revealed that SpaceX was aiming to launch the first cargo missions to Mars with the vehicle in 2022, as part of his overarching goal of colonizing the Red Planet.

In March 2018, the entrepreneur told an audience at the annual South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, that he hoped to have the BFR ready for short flights early the following year, while delivering a knowing nod at his previous problems with meeting deadlines.

The following month, it was announced that SpaceX would construct a facility at the Port of Los Angeles to build and house the BFR. The port property presented an ideal location for SpaceX, as its mammoth rocket will only be movable by barge or ship when completed.

Starlink Internet Satellites

In late March 2018, SpaceX received permission from the U.S. government to launch a fleet of satellites into low orbit for the purpose of providing Internet service. The satellite network, named Starlink, would ideally make broadband service more accessible in rural areas, while also boosting competition in heavily populated markets that are typically dominated by one or two providers.

SpaceX launched the first batch of 60 satellites in May 2019, and followed with another payload of 60 satellites that November. While this represented significant progress for the Starlink venture, the appearance of these bright orbiters in the night sky, with the potential of thousands more to come, worried astronomers who felt that a proliferation of satellites would increase the difficulty of studying distant objects in space.

Tesla Motors

Musk is the co-founder, CEO and product architect at Tesla Motors, a company formed in 2003 that is dedicated to producing affordable, mass-market electric cars as well as battery products and solar roofs. Musk oversees all product development, engineering and design of the company's products.

Five years after its formation, in March 2008, Tesla unveiled the Roadster, a sports car capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds, as well as traveling nearly 250 miles between charges of its lithium ion battery.

With a stake in the company taken by Daimler and a strategic partnership with Toyota, Tesla Motors launched its initial public offering in June 2010, raising $226 million.

In August 2008, Tesla announced plans for its Model S, the company's first electric sedan that was reportedly meant to take on the BMW 5 series. In 2012, the Model S finally entered production at a starting price of $58,570. Capable of covering 265 miles between charges, it was honored as the 2013 Car of the Year by Motor Trend magazine .

In April 2017, Tesla announced that it surpassed General Motors to become the most valuable U.S. car maker. The news was an obvious boon to Tesla, which was looking to ramp up production and release its Model 3 sedan later that year.

In September 2019, using what Musk described as a "Plaid powertrain," a Model S set a speed record for four-door sedan at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey County, California.

The Model 3 was officially launched in early 2019 following extensive production delays. The car was initially priced at $35,000, a much more accessible price point than the $69,500 and up for its Model S and X electric sedans.

After initially aiming to produce 5,000 new Model 3 cars per week by December 2017, Musk pushed that goal back to March 2018, and then to June with the start of the new year. The announced delay didn't surprise industry experts, who were well aware of the company's production problems, though some questioned how long investors would remain patient with the process. It also didn't prevent Musk from garnering a radical new compensation package as CEO, in which he would be paid after reaching milestones of growing valuation based on $50 billion increments.

By April 2018, with Tesla expected to fall short of first-quarter production forecasts, news surfaced that Musk had pushed aside the head of engineering to personally oversee efforts in that division. In a Twitter exchange with a reporter, Musk said it was important to "divide and conquer" to meet production goals and was "back to sleeping at factory."

After signaling that the company would reorganize its management structure, Musk in June announced that Tesla was laying off 9 percent of its workforce, though its production department would remain intact. In an email to employees, Musk explained his decision to eliminate some "duplication of roles" to cut costs, admitting it was time to take serious steps toward turning a profit.

The restructuring appeared to pay dividends, as it was announced that Tesla had met its goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 cars per week by the end of June 2018, while churning out another 2,000 Model S sedans and Model X SUVs. "We did it!" Musk wrote in a celebratory email to the company. "What an incredible job by an amazing team."

The following February, Musk announced that the company was finally rolling out its standard Model 3. Musk also said that Tesla was shifting to all-online sales, and offering customers the chance to return their cars within seven days or 1,000 miles for a full refund.

In November 2017, Musk made another splash with the unveiling of the new Tesla Semi and Roadster at the company's design studio. The semi-truck, which was expected to enter into production in 2019 before being delayed, boasts 500 miles of range as well as a battery and motors built to last 1 million miles.

Model Y and Roadster

In March 2019, Musk unveiled Tesla’s long-awaited Model Y. The compact crossover, which began arriving for customers in March 2020, has a driving range of 300 miles and a 0 to 60 mph time of 3.5 seconds.

The Roadster, also set to be released in 2020, will become the fastest production car ever made, with a 0 to 60 time of 1.9 seconds.

In August 2016, in Musk’s continuing effort to promote and advance sustainable energy and products for a wider consumer base, a $2.6 billion dollar deal was solidified to combine his electric car and solar energy companies. His Tesla Motors Inc. announced an all-stock deal purchase of SolarCity Corp., a company Musk had helped his cousins start in 2006. He is a majority shareholder in each entity.

“Solar and storage are at their best when they're combined. As one company, Tesla (storage) and SolarCity (solar) can create fully integrated residential, commercial and grid-scale products that improve the way that energy is generated, stored and consumed,” read a statement on Tesla’s website about the deal.

The Boring Company

In January 2017, Musk launched The Boring Company, a company devoted to boring and building tunnels in order to reduce street traffic. He began with a test dig on the SpaceX property in Los Angeles.

In late October of that year, Musk posted the first photo of his company's progress to his Instagram page. He said the 500-foot tunnel, which would generally run parallel to Interstate 405, would reach a length of two miles in approximately four months.

In May 2019 the company, now known as TBC, landed a $48.7 million contract from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to build an underground Loop system to shuttle people around the Las Vegas Convention Center.

In October 2022, Musk officially bought Twitter and became the social media company's CEO after months of back and forth.

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Musk’s Tweet and SEC Investigation

On August 7, 2018, Musk dropped a bombshell via a tweet: "Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured." The announcement opened the door for legal action against the company and its founder, as the SEC began inquiring about whether Musk had indeed secured the funding as claimed. Several investors filed lawsuits on the grounds that Musk was looking to manipulate stock prices and ambush short sellers with his tweet.

Musk’s tweet initially sent Tesla stock spiking, before it closed the day up 11 percent. The CEO followed up with a letter on the company blog, calling the move to go private "the best path forward." He promised to retain his stake in the company, and added that he would create a special fund to help all current investors remain on board.

Six days later, Musk sought to clarify his position with a statement in which he pointed to discussions with the managing director of the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund as the source of his "funding secured" declaration. He later tweeted that he was working on a proposal to take Tesla private with Goldman Sachs and Silver Lake as financial advisers.

The saga took a bizarre turn that day when rapper Azealia Banks wrote on Instagram that, as a guest at Musk's home at the time, she learned that he was under the influence of LSD when he fired off his headline-grabbing tweet. Banks said she overheard Musk making phone calls to drum up the funding he promised was already in place.

The news quickly turned serious again when it was reported that Tesla's outside directors had retained two law firms to deal with the SEC inquiry and the CEO's plans to take the company private.

On August 24, one day after meeting with the board, Musk announced that he had reversed course and would not be taking the company private. Among his reasons, he cited the preference of most directors to keep Tesla public, as well as the difficulty of retaining some of the large shareholders who were prohibited from investing in a private company. Others suggested that Musk was also influenced by the poor optics of an electric car company being funded by Saudi Arabia, a country heavily involved in the oil industry.

On September 29, 2018, it was announced that Musk would pay a $20 million fine and step down as chairman of Tesla's board for three years as part of an agreement with the SEC.

Inventions and Innovations

In August 2013, Musk released a concept for a new form of transportation called the "Hyperloop," an invention that would foster commuting between major cities while severely cutting travel time. Ideally resistant to weather and powered by renewable energy, the Hyperloop would propel riders in pods through a network of low-pressure tubes at speeds reaching more than 700 mph. Musk noted that the Hyperloop could take from seven to 10 years to be built and ready for use.

Although he introduced the Hyperloop with claims that it would be safer than a plane or train, with an estimated cost of $6 billion — approximately one-tenth of the cost for the rail system planned by the state of California — Musk's concept has drawn skepticism. Nevertheless, the entrepreneur has sought to encourage the development of this idea.

After he announced a competition for teams to submit their designs for a Hyperloop pod prototype, the first Hyperloop Pod Competition was held at the SpaceX facility in January 2017. A speed record of 284 mph was set by a German student engineering team at competition No. 3 in 2018, with the same team pushing the record to 287 mph the next year.

AI and Neuralink

Musk has pursued an interest in artificial intelligence, becoming co-chair of the nonprofit OpenAI. The research company launched in late 2015 with the stated mission of advancing digital intelligence to benefit humanity.

In 2017, it was also reported that Musk was backing a venture called Neuralink, which intends to create devices to be implanted in the human brain and help people merge with software. He expanded on the company's progress during a July 2019 discussion, revealing that its devices will consist of a microscopic chip that connects via Bluetooth to a smartphone.

High-Speed Train

In late November 2017, after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked for proposals to build and operate a high-speed rail line that would transport passengers from O'Hare Airport to downtown Chicago in 20 minutes or less, Musk tweeted that he was all-in on the competition with The Boring Company. He said that the concept of the Chicago loop would be different from his Hyperloop, its relatively short route not requiring the need for drawing a vacuum to eliminate air friction.

In summer 2018 Musk announced he would cover the estimated $1 billion needed to dig the 17-mile tunnel from the airport to downtown Chicago. However, in late 2019 he tweeted that TBC would focus on completing the commercial tunnel in Las Vegas before turning to other projects, suggesting that plans for Chicago would remain in limbo for the immediate future.

Flamethrower

Musk also reportedly found a market for The Boring Company's flamethrowers. After announcing they were going on sale for $500 apiece in late January 2018, he claimed to have sold 10,000 of them within a day.

Relationship with Donald Trump

In December 2016, Musk was named to President Trump’s Strategy and Policy Forum; the following January, he joined Trump's Manufacturing Jobs Initiative. Following Trump’s election, Musk found himself on common ground with the new president and his advisers as the president announced plans to pursue massive infrastructure developments.

While sometimes at odds with the president's controversial measures, such as a proposed ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, Musk defended his involvement with the new administration. "My goals," he tweeted in early 2017, "are to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy and to help make humanity a multi-planet civilization, a consequence of which will be the creating of hundreds of thousands of jobs and a more inspiring future for all."

On June 1, following Trump's announcement that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, Musk stepped down from his advisory roles.

Personal Life

Wives and children.

Musk has been married twice. He wed Justine Wilson in 2000, and the couple had six children together. In 2002, their first son died at 10 weeks old from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Musk and Wilson had five additional sons together: twins Griffin and Xavier (born in 2004) and triplets Kai, Saxon and Damian (born in 2006).

After a contentious divorce from Wilson, Musk met actress Talulah Riley. The couple married in 2010. They split in 2012 but married each other again in 2013. Their relationship ultimately ended in divorce in 2016.

Girlfriends

Musk reportedly began dating actress Amber Heard in 2016 after finalizing his divorce with Riley and Heard finalized her divorce from Johnny Depp . Their busy schedules caused the couple to break up in August 2017; they got back together in January 2018 and split again one month later.

In May 2018, Musk began dating musician Grimes (born Claire Boucher). That month, Grimes announced that she had changed her name to “ c ,” the symbol for the speed of light, reportedly on the encouragement of Musk. Fans criticized the feminist performer for dating a billionaire whose company has been described as a “predator zone” among accusations of sexual harassment.

The couple discussed their love for one another in a March 2019 feature in the Wall Street Journal Magazine , with Grimes saying “Look, I love him, he’s great...I mean, he’s a super-interesting goddamn person.” Musk, for his part, told the Journal, “I love c’s wild fae artistic creativity and hyper-intense work ethic.”

Grimes gave birth to their son on May 4, 2020, with Musk announcing that they had named the boy "X Æ A-12." Later in the month, after it was reported that the State of California wouldn't accept a name with a number, the couple said they were changing their son's name to "X Æ A-Xii."

Musk and Grimes welcomed their second child, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, in December 2021. The child was delivered via a surrogate.

Nonprofit Work

The boundless potential of space exploration and the preservation of the future of the human race have become the cornerstones of Musk's abiding interests, and toward these, he has founded the Musk Foundation, which is dedicated to space exploration and the discovery of renewable and clean energy sources.

In October 2019 Musk pledged to donate $1 million to the #TeamTrees campaign, which aims to plant 20 million trees around the world by 2020. He even changed his Twitter name to Treelon for the occasion.

QUICK FACTS

Name: Elon Musk
Birth Year: 1971
Birth date: June 28, 1971
Birth City: Pretoria
Birth Country: South Africa
Gender: Male
Best Known For: South African entrepreneur Elon Musk is known for founding Tesla Motors and SpaceX, which launched a landmark commercial spacecraft in 2012.
Space Exploration
Internet/Computing
Astrological Sign: Cancer
University of Pennsylania
Queen's University, Ontario
Stanford University
Nacionalities
South African
Interesting Facts
Elon Musk left Stanford after two days to take advantage of the Internet boom.
In April 2017, Musk's Tesla Motors surpassed General Motors to become the most valuable U.S. car maker.

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

Article Title: Elon Musk Biography
Author: Biography.com Editors
Website Name: The Biography.com website
Url: https://www.biography.com/business-leaders/elon-musk
Access Date:
Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
Last Updated: October 31, 2022
Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
I'm very pro-environment, but let's figure out how to do it better and not jump through a dozen hoops to achieve what is obvious in the first place.
Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

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The Quotes Archive

100+ Inspirational Elon Musk Quotes: Leading With Tenacity

Elon Musk, a name synonymous with innovation and daring ventures, has captivated the world with his extraordinary vision and relentless pursuit of the impossible.

He is not just a tech mogul or an entrepreneur; he is a visionary whose ideas have the potential to reshape the future of humanity. Musk’s journey from co-founding PayPal to leading companies like SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and The Boring Company has been nothing short of remarkable.

One of the remarkable aspects of Elon Musk’s persona is his ability to distill complex ideas and grand visions into concise, thought-provoking quotes.

These quotes not only offer a glimpse into his visionary mind but also serve as a source of inspiration for countless individuals around the world. In this blog, we’ll delve into some of the best quotes by Elon Musk, exploring their significance and the profound impact they have had on technology, business, and our collective imagination.

From discussing the future of space exploration and electric vehicles to delving into the intricacies of artificial intelligence and renewable energy, Elon Musk’s quotes cover a wide spectrum of topics.

Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, a technology enthusiast, or simply someone in search of inspiration, Musk’s words are bound to leave you intrigued and motivated.

So, join us on this journey as we unlock the mind of Elon Musk through his most inspirational and thought-provoking quotes. Let’s explore the wisdom, innovation, and audacity that define the man who aims to take humanity to the stars and revolutionize the way we live here on Earth.

100+ Inspirational Elon Musk Quotes_ Leading With Tenacity

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”
“I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”
“I’d like to die on Mars, just not on impact.”
“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”
“The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.”
“If something is important enough, you should try. Even if you – the probable outcome is failure.”
“Great companies are built on great products.”
“Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.”
“The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions: Either it’s going to become multi-planetary, or it’s going to remain confined to one planet and eventually there’s going to be an extinction event.”
“You want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse.”
“It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”
“Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.”
“I think it’s possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”
“I do think there is a good framework for thinking. It is physics. You know the sort of first principles reasoning.”
“The thing that’s worth doing is trying to improve our understanding of the world and gain a better appreciation of the universe and not to worry too much about there being no meaning.”

These quotes provide a glimpse into Elon Musk’s visionary thinking, determination, and his passion for pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the realms of technology and space exploration.

“The most powerful thing we can do is inspire each other.”
“I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.”
“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.”
“You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be… better.”
“I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”
“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.”
“I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.”
“I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.”
“It’s important that we attempt to extend life beyond Earth. I think we’ve got a pretty good shot at it.”
“I’d like to die on Mars, but not on impact.”
“My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.”
“You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that’s wrong with it and fix it. Seek negative feedback, particularly from friends.”
“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.”
“I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.”

These quotes continue to reflect Elon Musk’s unique perspective on innovation, ambition, and his unrelenting commitment to shaping a future that’s marked by progress and possibility.

“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.”
“I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.”
“I think the best way to attract venture capital is to try and come up with a demonstration of whatever product or service it is and ideally take that as far as you can. Just see if you can sell that to real customers and start generating some momentum. The further along you can get with that, the more likely you are to get funding.”
“Life is too short for long-term grudges.”
“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences.”
“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.”
“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.”
“It’s very important to like the people you work with, otherwise life [and] your job is gonna be quite miserable.”
“It is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”
“There’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.”

These quotes provide further insight into Elon Musk’s leadership philosophy, work ethic, and his belief in the importance of constant improvement and innovation.

“The most valuable thing I own is a two-dollar bill signed by [former Secretary of Treasury] Bob Rubin. That’s really cool.”
“Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive, and determination of the people behind it as the product they sell.”
“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.”
“I’m interested in things that change the world or that affect the future and wondrous, new technology where you see it, and you’re like, ‘Wow, how did that even happen? How is that possible?'”
“I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It’s the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work on big ideas, or you get left behind.”
“I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.”
“I would like to be remembered as someone who was useful to the world and made a difference.”
“You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.”

These quotes capture Elon Musk’s philosophy on business, innovation, and his unwavering dedication to pushing the boundaries of technology and human achievement.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.”
“I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.”
“I want to die on Mars. Just not on impact.”
“I think the value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question.”
“If you want to grow a giant redwood, you need to make sure the seeds are ok, nurture the sapling, and work out what might potentially stop it from growing all the way along. Anything that breaks it at any point stops that growth.”

These quotes reflect Elon Musk’s deep commitment to his work, his relentless pursuit of ambitious goals, and his unique perspective on the importance of innovation and perseverance in the face of challenges.

“It’s all about making a product that people really love. If you don’t make a product that people love, then you’re screwed.”
“Really pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends. … Hardly anyone does that, and it’s incredibly helpful.”
“Work like hell. I mean, you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success.”
“Don’t confuse education with schooling. I didn’t go to Harvard, but people who work for me did.”
“I’m a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.”
“The longer you wait to fire someone, the longer it has been since you should have fired them.”
“The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.”

These quotes showcase Elon Musk’s determination, work ethic, and his belief in the transformative power of innovation and hard work. They provide valuable insights into his entrepreneurial mindset and approach to tackling ambitious projects.

“I’d like to be a part of the solution and not part of the problem.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.”

These quotes continue to highlight Elon Musk’s passion for innovation, his dedication to his work, and his vision for a future that is shaped by technology and exploration.

“I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.”

These quotes offer further insight into Elon Musk’s mindset, work ethic, and his visionary approach to tackling complex challenges and pioneering innovative solutions.

These quotes provide further insight into Elon Musk’s philosophy on business, innovation, and his unyielding determination to make a lasting impact on humanity through his ventures.

These quotes showcase Elon Musk’s passion for innovation, his dedication to his work, and his vision for a future that is shaped by technology and exploration.

These quotes offer further insight into Elon Musk’s passion for innovation, his dedication to his work, and his vision for a future that is shaped by technology and exploration.

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Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, is not only a visionary technologist but also a profound thinker whose words have left an indelible mark on the landscape of innovation and entrepreneurship. Through his insightful and thought-provoking quotes, Page has inspired countless individuals to push the boundaries of what is possible and to embrace the spirit…

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Theodore Roosevelt, a larger-than-life figure in American history, was not only the 26th President of the United States but also a prolific writer, orator, and visionary leader. His legacy is etched not only in the pages of political history but also in the timeless wisdom encapsulated in his best quotes. Roosevelt’s words resonate with a…

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25 Quotes That Will Take You Inside the Mind of Elon Musk

E lon Musk has had a futuristic mindset since he was a young boy, when he sold his first software — a game called Blastar — at age 11.

He went on to found and sell a startup to Compaq for $300 million in 1999, and parlayed that into a major stake in PayPal, which eBay bought for $1.5 billion in 2002.

He then got into three world-changing companies: Tesla, SpaceX, and Solar City. And though Tesla and SpaceX nearly went bankrupt , each company is now shifting its respective industry.

Yet Musk — with his 100-hour workweeks, estimated $13 billion net worth , and habit of never taking a note in meetings — remains enigmatic. So we went looking for clues to his vision, goals, and thinking process.

Here’s what we found.

On finding your own education

“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.

“When I asked for an explanation, I got the true explanation of how things work. I also did things like make model rockets, and in South Africa there were no premade rockets: I had to go to the chemist and get the ingredients for rocket fuel, mix it, put it in a pipe.”

— Wired , October 2012

On his childhood experiments

“It is remarkable how many things you can explode. I’m lucky I have all my fingers.”

— Businessweek , Sept. 13, 2012

On his favorite book when he was a teen, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“It taught me that the tough thing is figuring out what questions to ask, but that once you do that, the rest is really easy.”

“Going from PayPal, I thought well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity? Not from the perspective, ‘what’s the best way to make money,’ which is okay, but, it was really ‘what do I think is going to most affect the future of humanity.'”

— Cal Tech commencement address , June 2012

On (not) taking time off

“I did reasonably well from PayPal. I was the largest shareholder in the company and we were acquired for about a billion and a half in stock and then the stock doubled.

“So yeah, I did reasonably well, but 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.”

— Computer History Museum , February 5, 2013

On working hard

“Work like h—. I mean you just have to put in 80- to 100-hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour workweeks and you’re putting in 100 hour workweeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.”

— Inc. , July 14, 2015

On thinking rigorously

“[Physics is] a good framework for thinking. … Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.”

— TED , February 2013

On the uselessness of process

“I don’t believe in process. In fact, when I interview a potential employee and he or she says that ‘it’s all about the process,’ I see that as a bad sign.

“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.”

On the importance 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.”

— Business Insider , August 8, 2013

On how to attract talent

“You have to have a very compelling goal for the company. If you put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s talented at a world level, they have to believe that there’s potential for a great outcome and believe in the leader of the company, that you’re the right guy to work with. That can be a difficult thing, especially if you’re trying to attract people from other companies.”

On the importance of feedback

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

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

On the necessary horror of starting a company

“You encounter issues you didn’t expect, step on landmines. It’s bad. Years 2 to 4 or 5 are usually quite difficult. A friend has a saying, it’s ‘eating glass and staring into the abyss’ …

“If you’re cofounder 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.”

On not worrying too much about the swings of the market

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

— Dell Keynote , December 12, 2013

On opening up Tesla’s patents

“Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.

“We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform. …

“We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.”

— Tesla blog post , June 12, 2014

On flying cars

“I’ve thought about it quite a lot … We could definitely make a flying car – but that’s not the hard part … The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that’s super safe and quiet? Because if it’s a howler, you’re going to make people very unhappy.”

— The Independent , June 8, 2014

On Henry Ford and innovation

“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.”

On why the status quo is maintained

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

On when he first decided to go into space

“The thing that I got hung up on was the rocket. Getting there in the first place. The U.S. options from Boeing and Lockheed were simply too expensive. I couldn’t afford them. So, I went to Russia three times to negotiate purchasing an ICBM.”

— YouTube , November 22, 2012

On aiming for Mars

“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.”

On getting to Mars

“There will be those who can afford to go (to Mars), and those who want to go. I think if we can achieve that intersection, then it will happen … and, hopefully, it will happen before I’m dead.”

— Space.com , May 19, 2014

On building a reusable rocket

“If humanity is to become multi-planetary, the fundamental breakthrough that needs to occur in rocketry is a rapidly and completely reusable rocket … achieving it would be on a par with what the Wright brothers did. It’s the fundamental thing that’s necessary for humanity to become a space-faring civilization. America would never have been colonized if ships weren’t reusable.”

On the promise of America

“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.”

— National Press Club , September 29, 2011

On his philosophical outlook

“I came to the conclusion that we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.”

— Businessweek , September 13, 2012

On the arc of his life

“I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact.”

— The Economist , May 21, 2012

This article originally appeared on Business Insider

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Eight things we learned from the Elon Musk biography

Widespread access to world’s richest man allowed biographer Walter Isaacson to detail a number of illuminating anecdotes

A new biography of Elon Musk was published on Tuesday and contains colourful details of the life of the world’s richest man.

Musk afforded widespread access to his biographer, Walter Isaacson, the author of the bestselling biography of the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and the book contains a series of illuminating anecdotes about Musk. Here are eight things we learned from the book.

1. Musk’s difficult relationship with his father

Musk, 52, was born and raised in South Africa and endured a fraught relationship with his father, Errol, an engineer. Isaacson writes that Errol “bedevils Elon”.

Musk’s brother, Kimbal, says the worst memory of his life was watching Errol berate Musk after he was hospitalised after a fight at school (the book says Musk was still getting corrective surgery for the injuries decades later). “My father just lost it,” says Kimbal.

Musk and Kimbal, who are estranged from their father, describe Errol as a “volatile fabulist”. Interviewed by Isaacson, Errol admits he encouraged a “physical and emotional toughness” in his sons.

Grimes, the artist who is mother to three of his 10 children, says PTSD from Musk’s childhood shaped an aversion to contentment: “I just don’t think he knows how to savor success and smell the flowers.” Musk tells Isaacson he agrees: “Adversity shaped me. My pain threshold became very high.”

2. Elon Musk has an issue with the ‘woke mind virus’

Shortly before taking over Twitter, or X as it is now called, Musk told Isaacson that the “woke mind virus” – a derogatory term for progressive politics and culture – would prevent extraplanetary settlement (one of Musk’s fixations).

“Unless the woke mind virus, which is fundamentally anti-science, anti-merit, and anti-human in general, is stopped, civilization will never become multiplanetary,” said Musk.

3. Musk gave Twitter executives short shrift

Musk fired Twitter’s executive team as soon as he completed the takeover of Twitter in October last year and it had been coming. When Musk bought a significant stake in Twitter months before, he agreed to meet the CEO, Parag Agrawal. After the meeting, Musk said: “What Twitter needs is a fire-breathing dragon and Parag is not that.”

They soon fell out. Agrawal texted Musk to say his tweet asking if Twitter was “dying” was not helpful. Musk, on a break in Hawaii, replied: “What did you get done this week?” He added: “I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time. Will make an offer to take Twitter private.”

This was during discussions about Musk joining the board. Agrawal’s reply underlined the power imbalance, and Twitter’s fear of Musk. He texted: “Can we talk?” Musk soon lodged an official bid for Twitter, which he tried unsuccessfully to wriggle out of, but the die was cast for Agrawal and his colleagues.

4. Sam Bankman-Fried tried to get in on the Twitter takeover

The founder and CEO of the fallen cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, offered via his banker to put $5bn (£4.1bn) into the Twitter takeover, the book claims. Bankman-Fried also wanted to discuss putting Twitter on a blockchain – the technological underpinning for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

A subsequent call between Musk and Bankman-Fried in May 2022 went badly, Isaacson wrote. “My bullshit detector went off like red alert on a Geiger counter,” Musk is quoted as saying.

Bankman-Fried’s offer to invest or to roll over $100m of Twitter stock that he claimed he had invested, came to nothing.

5. Musk tried to recruit Rudy Giuliani as an adviser

In his early tycoon career, Musk pondered recruiting the then mayor of New York as a political fixer to help him turn his PayPal business into a bank in 2001. Musk sought a meeting with Giuliani, then coming to the end of his tenure in office, because he wanted to turn PayPal – an online payments company – into a “social network that would disrupt the whole banking industry”.

In 2001, Musk and an investor, Michael Moritz, went to New York to see if they could hire Giuliani to guide them through the process of turning PayPal into a bank. It didn’t go well.

“It was like walking into a mob scene,” Moritz says in the book. Giuliani “was surrounded by goonish confidantes. He didn’t have any idea whatsoever about Silicon Valley, but he and his henchmen were eager to line their pockets”.

“‘This guy occupies a different planet,’ Musk told Moritz.”

6. Musk is concerned about a dwindling human population

One of Musk’s reasons for founding a new artificial intelligence company , xAI, is addressing the threat of population collapse. In one face-to-face conversation with Isaacson, the multi-billionaire said human intelligence was in danger of being surmounted by digital intelligence.

“The amount of human intelligence, he noted, was levelling off because people were not having enough children. Meanwhile, the amount of computer intelligence was going up exponentially, like Moore’s law on steroids. At some point, biological brainpower would be dwarfed by digital brainpower.”

This conversation was conducted at the Austin, Texas house of Shivon Zilis, an executive at Musk’s Neuralink business who is the mother of two of his children. Zilis told Isaacson she agreed to have children with Musk via IVF after listening to his arguments about having children as a “kind of social duty”. She said: “He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to.”

7. Musk is very concerned about AI

Musk tells Isaacson that human consciousness is under threat from the prospect of super-intelligent, and uncontrollable, AI systems.

He says: “What can be done to make AI safe? I keep wrestling with that. What actions can we take to minimize AI danger and assure that human consciousness survives?”

8. Musk’s complicated role in the Ukraine conflict

Musk’s satellite communications unit, Starlink, has a key role in Ukraine’s defence against the Russian invasion. When a Russian cyber-attack crippled Ukraine’s satellite comms network an hour before the invasion, Musk stepped in following an appeal for help from Ukrainian officials and the country’s deputy prime minister.

However, the book alleges that Musk told his engineers to “turn off” Starlink coverage that would have facilitated an attack by drone submarines on Russia’s navy at the Sevastopol base in Crimea.

However, Isaacson has subsequently clarified this excerpt after Musk used his X platform to state that there was no Starlink coverage in that area and he refused a Ukrainian request to activate it. Musk posted: “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson is published by Simon & Schuster. To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

Biography books

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58 of the Most Inspiring Elon Musk Quotes

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, Africa in 1971. As a child, Musk had so many daydreams about inventing things that he often became lost in his daydreams. Aside from being a dreamer, he displayed talents in entrepreneurship and technology. Elon Musk actually created a video game at the age of 12 and sold to a computer magazine.

Elon left his birthplace because he believed that there would be greater economic opportunities for him in the United States. He attended a university in Canada for a while but then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, there he received his bachelor’s in economics and physics. In the 1990s, Musk founded companies online such as Zip2 and X.com. Zip2 provided maps to online newspapers and X.com later became PayPal.

In the early 2000s, Elon Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) so that he could make more affordable rockets. SpaceX actually developed the Dragon spacecraft, this spacecraft is used to deliver to the International Space Station (ISS). In 2004, Musk became one of the founders of Tesla Motors alongside Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.

In 2013, Elon proposed a faster way of transportation that he called the Hyperloop. He claimed the Hyperloop would only cost around six million and would travel at 760 miles per hour. Between managing SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said he had no time for the development of the Hyperloop.

Elon has made stunning contributions to society already and he’s still in his 40’s so he has much left to share with the world. Here are some of the most inspiring quotes from him to inspire your week!

Elon Musk Quotes

“I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary” – Elon Musk
“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” – Elon Musk
“My proceeds from the PayPal acquisition were $180 million. I put $100 million in SpaceX, $70m in Tesla, and $10m in Solar City. I had to borrow money for rent.” – Elon Musk
“What makes innovative thinking happen?… I think it’s really a mindset. You have to decide.” – Elon Musk
“Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.” – Elon Musk
“Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.” – Elon Musk
“If something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor” – Elon Musk
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.” – Elon Musk
“You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.” – Elon Musk
“I’ve actually not read any books on time management.” – Elon Musk
“There’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their *ss-covering.” – Elon Musk
“I’m a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.” – Elon Musk
“Patience is virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson” – Elon Musks
“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.” – Elon Musk
“You get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of problems you solve” – Elon Musk
“I would just question things… It would infuriate my parents… That I wouldn’t just believe them when they said something ’cause I’d ask them why. And then I’d consider whether that response made sense given everything else I knew.” – Elon Musk
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.” – Elon Musk
“If you had to buy a new plane every time you flew somewhere, it would be incredibly expensive.” – Elon Musk
“Trying to build a company is like baking a cake, you have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion” – Elon Musk
“I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.” – Elon Musk
“I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.” – Elon Musk
“The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.” – Elon Musk
“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.” – Elon Musk
“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.” – Elon Musk
“Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time” – Elon Musk
“It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.” – Elon Musk
“I think it would be great to be born on Earth and die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact.” – Elon Musk
“My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.” – Elon Musk
“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.” – Elon Musk
“I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy.” – Elon Musk
“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 out” – Elon Musk
“Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.” – Elon Musk
“Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of whatever you’re doing is as valuable as gold.” – Elon Musk
“I wouldn’t say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and fries my nervous system.” – Elon Musk
“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.” – Elon Musk
“You have to be pretty driven to make it happen. Otherwise, you will just make yourself miserable.” – Elon Musk
“I think life on earth must be about more than just solving problems. It’s got to be inspiring, even if it is vicarious” – Elon Musk
“I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.” – Elon Musk
“I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.” – Elon Musk
“I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.” – Elon Musk
“Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive, and determination of the people behind it as the product they sell.” – Elon Musk
“You want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse.” – Elon Musk
“If the rules are such that you can’t make progress, then you have to fight the rules” – Elon Musk
“We’re running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere… can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.” – Elon Musk
“It is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.” – Elon Musk
“Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.” – Elon Musk
“There are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions.” – Elon Musk
“Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.” – Elon Musk
“I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you can do things better and question yourself” – Elon Musk
“Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.” – Elon Musk
“If you need inspiration, don’t do it.” – Elon Musk
“I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.” – Elon Musk
“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
“Some people doesn’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster” – Elon Musk
“Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.” – Elon Musk
“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
“As much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs. MBA programs don’t teach people how to create companies.” – Elon Musk
“We knew it could be done. It was a question of how hard it would be and how long it would take us to sort it out” – Elon Musk

Another fascinating deep thinker is Naval Ravikant – be sure to check out our post about him.

Elon Musk Video – Joe Rogan Experience #1169

If you want to see how Elon’s brain works, this extended interview is quite a treat. Elon discusses many topics with Joe Rogan including electric vehicles, the future of civilization and SpaceX.

As of this writing, this video has been viewed nearly 40 million times – it’s definitely worth a watch!

Our amazing collection of Joe Rogan Quotes is worth a read too!

Besides being one of the richest people on Earth, Elon Musk has also used his money and resources to aid the human race in survival. What he is trying to accomplish with SpaceX is to eventually entertain the possibility of the human race being a multi-planet species. He believes that in order for human life to survive, we need to become a multi-planet species.

Elon Musk is without a doubt smart, inspirational and motivational to people all over the world. Some of these quotes may provide you with the inspiration you need to become a daydreamer like Elon Musk himself.

Related: Jeff Bezos Quotes

Image Credit: The Royal Society, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

I’m Alice Judy and AnQuotes is a fun hobby for me. We know that everyone loves a great quote and our mission here is simple – to be the best and most interesting quote site in the world! If you have quotes you would like us to cover, please contact us.

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Elon Musk’s Twitter a year later: Everything you need to know

Welcome to Elon Musk’s Twitter ( now X ), where the rules are made up and the check marks don’t matter.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO announced his bid to buy Twitter in April 2022, zealously driven to rid the platform of spam bots and protect free speech; now, it’s the one-year anniversary since he made his dramatic entrance to the company in October 2022, and the platform has changed so much that even its name is different.

“This is just my strong, intuitive sense that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” Musk said at a TED conference on the day he made his offer. “I don’t care about the economics at all.”

Even for one of the richest men in the world, $44 billion is a lot of money to cough up to buy a middling social platform. Despite his fervent declarations about expanding “the scope and scale of consciousness” through public discourse, the billionaire got cold feet. A month later in May, he tried to kill the deal , claiming that Twitter had more bots than its public filings let on. After a truly chaotic legal discovery process, which even included some embarrassing texts , Musk was forced to seal the deal . By October, the platform was his.

Since Musk bought Twitter and took the company private, the news around the microblogging platform has been a whirlwind, rife with verification chaos, API access shakeups, ban reversals, staggering layoffs, and most notably, rebranding to X .

Musk also transitioned from his role as Twitter/X CEO to serving as its executive chair and CTO. It was announced on May 12 that Linda Yaccarino will step in as the next X CEO . Yaccarino left her role as chairman of Global Advertising & Partnerships at NBCU.

As X enters year two of Musk’s ownership, here’s a comprehensive timeline of everything that’s happened since Elon let that sink in .

Here’s a complete timeline of what’s going down at X, starting with the most recent news:

Elon musk says certain free users will get access to x premium features.

In a post on X, Musk said that accounts with more than 2,500 “verified subscriber followers” will get access to Premium features for free . Accounts with more than 5,000 of those followers will get access to features from the Premium+ tier for free.

Going forward, all 𝕏 accounts with over 2500 verified subscriber followers will get Premium features for free and accounts with over 5000 will get Premium+ for free — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 28, 2024

X is apparently testing NSFW adult communities

According to app researchers, X is working on an addition to its Communities feature that would let users create groups for adult content . As one of the few social networks that allows NSFW content, the new feature could give creators a more direct way to reach their audience.

This is how it'll look like on the community page! pic.twitter.com/Sou18ze7Va — Nima Owji (@nima_owji) February 28, 2024

Elon Musk says all X Premium subscribers will gain access to Grok chatbot

In a post on X, Musk announced that Grok will become available to all Premium subscribers . Previously, the AI chatbot was only available to subscribers of the higher-end tier Premium+ tier.

Later this week, Grok will be enabled for all premium subscribers (not just premium+) https://t.co/4u9lbLwe23 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 26, 2024

X usage has fallen by nearly a fifth since Elon Musk’s takeover, according to a new report

According to a recent report from Sensor Tower, X usage in the U.S. was down 18% year-over-year as of February 2024 , and down 23% since Musk’s acquisition. The report claims that the U.S. daily active user base has flatlined or declined every month since Musk’s takeover.

Don Lemon says Elon Musk has canceled his deal for a show on X

Former CNN anchor Don Lemon announced that Elon Musk has canceled the deal for his upcoming talk show on X . In a statement, Lemon says the partnership was terminated hours after he interviewed Musk for the first episode of the show. In response, Musk said the show’s “approach was basically just ‘CNN, but on social media.”

News from me… #TheDonLemonShow pic.twitter.com/PzlKuvkZtj — Don Lemon (@donlemon) March 13, 2024

X to launch a video streaming app on Samsung and Amazon TVs

Continuing on his promise to make X the “everything app,” Elon Musk is planning to launch a YouTube-like streaming app for Samsung and Amazon smart TVs. Musk said the dedicated app will allow users to watch videos from X on larger screens, like the Samsung TV and Amazon’s Fire TV.

Coming soon https://t.co/JlnlSL7eS9 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 9, 2024

X now allows Premium+ users and organizations to publish articles

X Premium+ subscribers and verified organizations can now publish longer posts on the platform . The Articles feature lets users publish posts with text formatting, other X posts and embedded videos and images — similar to a blog post or a Medium article. The change comes after X increased the limit for long posts to 25,000 characters for paying users.

https://t.co/dlJ6rIEONa — Write (@Write) March 7, 2024

X turns on voice call feature that could impact your privacy

Elon Musk launched audio and video calling on X in another bid to make it the “everything” app. The new feature is switched on by default, leaks your IP address to anyone you talk with, and can be incredibly confusing to figure out how to limit who can call you. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to turn it off.

audio and video calling are now available to everyone on X! who are you calling first? pic.twitter.com/DYvB7ZRrbY — News (@XNews) February 28, 2024

Former Twitter executives sue Elon Musk, alleging owed severance payments

Four former Twitter executives, including ex-CEO Parag Agrawal, sued Elon Musk, alleging that they’re owed over $128 million in severance payments. The lawsuit quotes Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk, which quotes the X CEO as saying he would “hunt every single one” of Twitter’s C-suite “till the day they die.”

February 2024

X goes to court in elon musk’s war against the center for countering digital hate.

X Corp is in court against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) after accusing the extremism research organization of “actively working to assert false and misleading claims about X” in a lawsuit last year. The nonprofit, formed in 2018, conducts research on social media platforms to track hate speech, extremism and misinformation. A judge has hinted that the suit may be dismissed .

X says it’s withholding accounts and tweets in India to obey orders

X said it is withholding specific accounts and posts in India in response to executive orders issued by the Indian government. The company said it disagrees with the action, but noncompliance would have subjected the firm to “potential penalties including significant fines and imprisonment.

X will soon let advertisers run ads next to a ‘curated list’ of creators

Advertisers will soon be able to run ads next to select content creators on X. The move will allow advertisers to ensure that their ads don’t run next to controversial or offensive content, following an exodus of numerous brands from X last year after their ads appeared next to pro-Nazi content.

Sports betting is coming to X with BetMGM partnership

X has forged a deal with BetMGM , making it X’s exclusive Live Odds Sports Betting partner and will introduce access to the betting service on X. Initially, X users in the U.S. will be able to explore the betting odds on pro football, with more professional and college sports to roll out over time.

Sports never sleep on @X . And now with @BetMGM , we'll bring fans on X even closer to the action to cheer and now bet on their favorite teams!! Let’s do this! pic.twitter.com/MFrzhKLE78 — Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) February 9, 2024

X becomes No. 1 app on U.S. App Store following announcement of Tucker Carlson-Putin interview

After Tucker Carlson announced he would be interviewing Russian president Vladimir Putin on X, downloads of the app sent it to the top of the U.S. App Store overnight. Appfigures’ early estimates indicate X gained 117,000 new downloads on Tuesday, up from 93,000 the day before.

𝕏 is now the #1 most downloaded app of any kind! pic.twitter.com/TeqWxcmZfs — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 7, 2024

January 2024

X ceo linda yaccarino claims company has 90m us users, less than 1% are teens.

During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing focused on kids’ online safety, Linda Yaccarino said that less than 1% of the app’s U.S. users were teens aged 13 through 17 . Yaccarino also claimed that there were 90 million X users in the U.S. — a drop from its reported 95.4 million estimated users as of January 2023.

X announces plans to hire 100 moderators in Austin

X announced that it would staff a new “Trust and Safety” center in Austin, which will include 100 full-time content moderators. The move comes more than a year after Elon Musk acquired the company, which saw him drastically reducing headcount, including trust and safety teams, moderators, engineers and other staff.

Taylor Swift fans strike back after explicit deepfakes flood X

Nonconsensual deepfake porn of Taylor Swift went viral on X, with one post garnering more than 45 million views before it was removed . In response, Swifties organized a fandom-driven campaign to bury the AI-generated content searched under terms “taylor swift ai” or “taylor swift deepfake.”

X removes support for NFT profile pictures

X quietly removed a feature for paid subscribers: the ability to set an NFT as their profile picture . The feature, which allowed Twitter Blue subscribers to set NFTs minted on Ethereum as custom hexagonal profile pictures, was originally launched by previous management in January 2022. Those who had NFT profile pictures still have hexagonal avatars, though it’s unclear if X will remove those as well.

X promises peer-to-peer payments, AI advances in 2024

In a blog post , the company claims it will launch peer-to-peer payments this year, to unlock “more user utility and new opportunities for commerce.” X also said that AI would be used to “increasingly power the X user and advertising experience” in search, ads and a forthcoming “See Dissimilar Posts” feature.

Journalists critical of Elon Musk had their X accounts temporarily suspended

X temporarily suspended the accounts of multiple journalists , commentators and podcasters who have been critical of Elon Musk, including The Texas Observer’s Steven Monacelli, The Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein, MintPress News’ Alan MacLeod and The TrueAnon podcast. The impacted accounts were reinstated a few hours later.

X brought back, then removed, then brought back again, headlines to link previews

X started showing headlines at the bottom of link preview cards again using a small font. Multiple users reported that they could see titles on link cards on the web, with some titles being cut off due to character limits. The company seemingly pulled the new format hours later, but it’s now back.

X launches “Verified Organizations” feature for small businesses

X’s “Verified Organizations” program now has a $200 per month tier intended for small businesses. The basic tier comes after X launched the $1,000 per month offering for businesses on the platform.

Fidelity marks down X’s valuation by 71.5%

Mutual fund company Fidelity marked down its investment in X holdings by 71.5% from the original valuation of shares. Fidelity spent $19.2 million to acquire a stake in X back in October 2022 and made a valuation cut of 65% a year later.

December 2023

Musk says x is bringing video to spaces soon.

X will be bringing video to Spaces in an attempt to get users to further engage with their audience without having to go to a third-party platform. Musk said X plans to launch the feature by the end of the year, but “certainly by early next year.”

Musk brings Alex Jones and Infowars back on X after user poll

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his media site Infowars are back on X after they were “permanently banned” from Twitter by the previous management in 2018.

Musk ran a poll asking whether it was appropriate to bring Jones back to the platform. Nearly 2 million people voted, with about 70% saying Jones’ account should be restored.

Reinstate Alex Jones on this platform? Vox Populi, Vox Dei. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2023

xAI’s chatbot ‘Grok’ launches to X Premium+ subscribers

‘Grok,’ xAI’s “rebellious” AI chatbot, has rolled out to all U.S. X Premium+ subscribers . Musk cautioned that the beta would face many issues, though it would be steadily improved. He also said that all English language users who subscribe to Premium+ would gain access to Grok in “about a week or so.”

X is now licensed for payment processing in a dozen U.S states

Musk is moving forward with his plans to morph X into a payments platform . The company in late November was granted three additional money transmitter licenses in South Dakota, Kansas and Wyoming, bringing the total number of states where the company is allowed to engage in money transfers to 12.

X says it will chase SMB ad dollars after losing major advertisers

A new report by the Financial Times says X will turn to small and medium-sized advertisers to shore up revenue. This comes after Elon Musk alienated big brands fleeing the platform over his endorsement of an antisemitic post.

November 2023

X sues media matters for defamation.

X filed a lawsuit alleging defamation by Media Matters over claims that major companies like IBM, Apple and Oracle had ads appear next to antisemitic content.

“The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and all those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company,” Musk said.

Musk says X will bring headlines back to link previews

X will reportedly start showing headlines in preview cards with URLs on the platform after removing them in October. Musk said an update will overlay the headline in the upper portion of the image of a URL card. He didn’t mention any specific timeline for rollout for the update.

In an upcoming release, 𝕏 will overlay title in the upper potion of the image of a URL card — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2023

Major X advertisers pause spending after Musk endorsed an antisemitic post

After Musk amplified antisemitic conspiracy theories on X, numerous high-profile advertisers paused their spending on the platform. They include: Apple, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, IBM, Paramount Global, Lionsgate, European Commission, Walmart and as of the time of this update’s publication, TechCrunch.

X also lost a high-profile brand campaign with Paris Hilton’s 11:11 Media , which would have seen Hilton promoting key X features like live video, live e-commerce, X Spaces and more over a two-year period.

At the DealBook conference, Musk told advertisers who recently paused their ad spending on X to “go fuck yourself.” X CEO Linda Yaccarino later publicly backed Musk and his remarks.

X introduces job search tool

In pursuit of becoming the “everything app,” X is attempting to compete in the hiring space. X unveiled its new job search feature, where Verified Organizations can post job listings that users can then search through by keyword and location. X plans for more updates in the future, including more sophisticated filtering tools, a job recommendations feature and the ability to bookmark roles.

Introducing our job search tool. Start exploring jobs on web at https://t.co/0A5snlK8Ne . pic.twitter.com/4KS0016M5N — Hiring (@XHiring) November 16, 2023

Ads watchdog files FTC complaint against X over unlabeled ads

X was caught running unlabeled ads in September. Now the issue is in the hands of the FTC. Independent non-profit Check My Ads filed a formal complaint with the FTC urging an investigation over the advertising practices at X, including the lack of disclosure about which posts are ads.

X changes algorithm to highlight smaller accounts

X’s For You feed typically surfaces popular and trending posts from its broader network alongside highlights from those you follow. The new algorithm update instead surfaces posts from smaller accounts, according to an X post by Elon Musk.

X runs ‘timeline takeover’ ad promoting anti-trans film

As part of a timeline takeover, conservative media nonprofit PragerU promoted the hashtag “#DETRANS” to advertise an anti-trans film . In a press release, PragerU noted that it chose X specifically for its ad campaign “as it is one of the least censored social media platforms” after being purchased by Elon Musk.

October 2023

X shuts down its circles feature.

On October 31, X shut down Circles , the much-beloved feature that allowed users to post to a small, exclusive audience similar to Instagram’s Close Friends. It remains unclear why Circles was sunsetted a bit more than a year after its August 2022 launch.

X tests charging $1 per year in select markets

“This new test was developed to bolster our already successful efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform, and bot activity while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount. It is not a profit driver,” the company said.

The company plans to use payment, phone and ID verification to stop bots .

Starting today, we’re testing a new program (Not A Bot) in New Zealand and the Philippines. New, unverified accounts will be required to sign up for a $1 annual subscription to be able to post & interact with other posts. Within this test, existing users are not affected. This… — Support (@Support) October 17, 2023

A new report claims X traffic and monthly active users are down

According to data from market intelligence firm Similarweb , X’s global site traffic was down 14% YoY in September. U.S. traffic was down by 19%. Performance had also declined 17.8% YoY on mobile devices in the U.S., based on monthly active users on iOS and Android.

X now requires users to answer a question before joining private Communities

Admins of private Communities on X can now require users to answer a question when they request to join, along with agreeing to the group’s rules. The new feature could help admins and moderators decide who should be able to join and offer some protection against spammers and bots.

X updates Community Notes

A series of updates were made to Community Notes after the fact-checking system took multiple days to correct misinformation related to the Israel-Hamas war. The changes include:

X CEO Linda Yaccarino promised Community Notes would “appear more quickly on X”
Note previews are now supported on both Android and the web, with support “coming soon” to iOS
Improved media matching
Notifications will send to users who Liked, Reposted or Replied to a post that later received a note

X changes its “Public interest expectations”

X/Twitter removed the requirement of having at least 100,000 followers for posts to be newsworthy. Prior to the policy change, only verified accounts would be considered for newsworthy posts. However, now that X allows people to get verified by paying for a subscription , the new version of the policy says posts only by “a high-profile account” counts as newsworthy posts.

However, the updated page doesn’t give details on what kind of accounts are considered “high-profile.”

X can now limit replies to verified users

The new control is not restricted to paid/premium accounts. Users who don’t pay for X Premium can also choose to not let non-verified users reply to their posts.

The feature originally limited replies to either “Accounts you follow” or “Only accounts you mention” in 2020, but users could only choose this setting before posting a tweet. In 2021, they updated the feature to allow users to control replies after a tweet was published.

X to test its three premium tiers

X CEO Linda Yaccarino discussed the plan in a briefing to X debt holders on October 5th.

It’s not clear when the three-tier subscription plan would go live, but references found in the X app’s code by @aaronp613 reference a “Premium Basic,” “Premium Standard” and “Premium Plus” plan, which have full ads, half the ads or no ads, respectively.

X is cutting headlines from link previews

Now you will only be able to see an image with the domain name of the link on the bottom left, which is easy to miss. The change is part of Musk’s efforts to get users to post “long-form content” directly on the platform rather than encouraging users to click out of the platform with link cards.

X Corp. faces a trademark lawsuit

Trademark attorney Josh Gerben and his firm are representing what seems to be the first client to sue X over its trademark — a Florida-based social media ad agency, X Social Media.

The complaint , which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, states that X Social Media, LLC “has continuously used the X Social Media Mark in commerce since at least early 2016,” and has significantly invested in marketplace awareness, which included developing a distinctive “X” mark that’s associated with its social media advertising services.

September 2023

X is shutting down its circle feature.

“X is deprecating Circles as of Oct 31st, 2023. After this date, you will not be able to create new posts that are limited to your Circle, nor will you be able to add people to your Circle. You will, however, be able to remove people from your Circle, by unfollowing them as described below,” X said on its support page .

Audio and video calls will be available to premium subscribers

New code in the X app reveals that both audio and video calls will be supported. However, the feature will only be available to those with an X Premium membership, it appears. The new findings were uncovered by tech veteran- turned-investor Chris Messina inside the X app’s code.

X may no longer be a free site

In a live-streamed conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, X Owner Elon Musk said the company was “moving to a small monthly payment” for the use of the platform. He suggested that such a change would be necessary to deal with the problem of bots.

Musk didn’t confirm what the new subscription payment would cost, but described it as a “small amount of money.”

X launches account verification

X has launched government ID-based account verification via a partnership with Israel-based Au10tix for paid users to prevent impersonation and give them benefits such as “prioritized support.” The pop-up for ID verification indicates that the Au10tix could store this data for up to 30 days.

X caught running unlabeled ads in users’ Following feeds

While scrolling the Following feed on a Mac using the Chrome web browser, TechCrunch encountered a handful of unlabeled ads amid other posts from people we follow, as well as other ads that did properly display the “Ad” label at the top right of the post.

Because many of X’s ads are still labeled, this makes the unlabeled ones even harder to spot.

It’s unclear if the issue is a glitch with X’s advertising platform or a deliberate change.

X bans scraping and crawling

The new terms , which are effective from September 29, ban any kind of scraping or crawling without “prior written consent.”

NOTE: crawling or scraping the Services in any form, for any purpose without our prior written consent is expressly prohibited.

The previous version of the terms allowed crawling in accordance with robots.txt.

Community Notes is now available for videos on X

Community Notes is an existing program for crowdsourced moderation. X announced that notes by contributors attached to a video will show up in all posts with that video.

August 2023

X will begin collecting user’s biometric data along with education and job history on september 29.

“Based on your consent, we may collect and use your biometric information for safety, security, and identification purposes,” the updated policy reads . X hasn’t specified what it means by biometric information, but it is usually used to describe a person’s physical characteristics, such as their face or fingerprints. X also hasn’t provided details on how it plans to collect it.

X allows paid users to hide their likes

Paid users on X now have a setting under profile customization that lets them hide the Likes tab. The move comes after rival social networks Threads and Bluesky rolled out the ability for users to see their own likes.

X confirms it’s lifting the ban on political ads

X confirmed it’s lifting its ban on paid political ads — a move it committed to earlier this year , shortly after Elon Musk took over the social network previously known as Twitter. The company had originally banned these ads in 2019 under then-CEO Jack Dorsey’s management.

X lures advertisers with a $250 ad credit

The company announced it would offer a one-time ad credit of $250 to select businesses when they spend $1,000 or more on new ad campaigns over the next 30 days.

X makes changes to retire some of the legacy API endpoints

The company said in a post that it’s discontinuing some of the endpoints while migrating others to the new v2 API. X also said that it is retiring the legacy Essential and Elevated tiers, and customers using them will need to move to any of the new tiers.

X plans to hide headlines from news links

Musk confirmed the move to roll out a new way to display news links without any headline or description in a post, saying the move was coming “directly” from him. The change would “greatly improve the aesthetics,” he said.

As of right now, a Twitter card for a news article shows the headline and summary text along with the header image in the preview card of a post. If the proposed change comes through, X will only show the image with a link in a post. That means if a publication or a blog doesn’t post any accompanying text with the link, users will only see the link and the image for that article.

Elon Musk says the ‘block’ feature is going away

“Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs,” Elon Musk wrote on X . “Makes no sense.” The post was a response to a Tesla fan account who asked whether there was any reason to use block instead of mute.

X now sorts posts by like counts

Posts, formerly called tweets, still appear in chronological order on profiles when you’re logged into the social network, but once you log out, they are sorted by performance.

Our tests show that even if you have a pinned post, it won’t appear at the top of your profile feed when logged out, which defeats the point of a pinned post.

X rolls out a new ‘Highlights’ tab for paid users

X began rolling out the new ‘Highlights’ tab to some subscribers in mid August. But according to the updated support page , the company is now making the feature available to all paid users.

X makes X Pro a subscriber-only

Previously known as TweetDeck, X Pro is now a subscriber-only product. The move isn’t entirely surprising, as on July 3, the company said that within 30 days TweetDeck would be accessible to only verified users. However, the social network was delayed in implementing the new rule by a few days.

X lowers requirements for its creator payout program

The company said that creators who have garnered 5 million impressions in the last three months will be eligible for ad revenue sharing. That requirement was previously set to 15 million impressions.

Creators will be able to withdraw as low as $10 instead of $50, X said. Users still need to be verified and must have at least 500 followers to qualify for payouts.

X CEO claims the company formerly known as Twitter is almost breaking even

“I’ve been at the company eight weeks,” Yaccarino said in her first broadcast interview since taking on her new role. “The operational run rate right now… we’re pretty close to break even.”

“Our data licensing and API with X is an incredible business. Our new subscription business [is] growing,” Yaccarino said. “And then, part of my, what I would say, expertise and experience, and what I came to do, was to drive advertising at the company.”

Video calls are coming to X

CEO Linda Yaccarino confirmed in her first TV interview that video calls will be a new feature coming to the service, as part of its transformation into an “everything app.”

X expands its partnership with Integral Ad Science

The partnership began in January to tell advertisers if their ad is placed around inappropriate content. Now, X is testing sensitivity settings, powered by machine learning, that let advertisers choose their thresholds for the kinds of content they want their ads to appear around — and according to a tweet from X owner Elon Musk, advertisers can buy these less desirable, “relaxed” sensitivity ad slots for less.

Brands can reduce adjacency to gore, excessive profanity and obscenity, targeted hate speech, sexual content, drugs and spam. Soon, X will add its “relaxed” setting, which offers cheaper advertising opportunities while only filtering for targeted hate speech and explicit sexual content.

X takes over @music handle, hinting at future music plans

The @music account was originally operated for 16 years by software developer Jeremy Vaught, who grew the @music handle to roughly half a million followers. Vaught posted in anger that X had commandeered the account for itself.

“Super pissed,” Vaught wrote on X , sharing a screenshot of the email X had sent him informing him of the change.

X streamlines Community Notes

The feature historically provided information to users about why they were seeing a fact check appended to a tweet. After three years of development, the company says this extra context will now be removed for those who are already experienced with Community Notes.

TweetDeck is renamed to XPro

The company has adopted the @Pro handle instead of @TweetDeck for the tool. However, many parts of the tool, including the help page, still have “Twitter” and “TweetDeck” mentions. Musk hinted at the change a week prior , adding that XPro will come with a “wide range of psy op plugins.” There are no details about what kind of plug-ins those might be.

X now allows paid users to hide their checkmarks

Paid verification was introduced last year with the Twitter Blue relaunch. The service was recently renamed to XBlue during the Twitter rebrand to X.

The idea is to help users benefit from subscription features without showing that they are a verified account. The option to hide the checkmark will show up in the “Profile customization” section of account settings.

The company has updated the help page for paid subscriptions , saying that even if you hide the checkmark it might be visible in some places. The company didn’t give any further details about those placeholders.

Want to change back to the old Twitter app icon on iOS? Here’s how:

On your iPhone, navigate to the Shortcuts app. If you have a newer iPhone, this should be pre-installed, but if not, you can find it in the App Store. If your iPhone is running on iOS 12.0 or higher, you’re good to go.
From the main Shortcuts screen on the Shortcuts app, you’re going to tap “All Shortcuts.”
Hit the blue plus sign in the top-right corner of your screen to set up a new Shortcut.
You should see a suggested action of “Open App” to build your new shortcut. Tap that.
Now, you’ll be prompted to set up a new “Open App” shortcut. Next to where it says “Open,” click on “App” to search for the X app. Select that.
Once you’ve selected the “X” app, tap the share icon on the navigation bar at the bottom of your screen. This will bring up another menu, where you can select “Add to Home Screen.”
Go ahead and type in Twitter instead of “Open App.” Then, tap the small Shortcut icon next to where you typed in Twitter.
Here, you can upload an image of the Twitter logo. However, you probably don’t have that already saved to your phone. Just Google “Twitter icon.” We used this one .

Apple accepts Twitter app’s rebrand to X in the app store

Apple typically doesn’t allow developers to name their apps as a single character, but they seemed to have made an exception.

X also changed its App Store tagline from “Let’s talk.” to “Blaze Your Glory!!” Musk himself posted a twee t with this tagline without any context.

X opens up its ad revenue sharing program globally

The company announced its “Ads Revenue Sharing” program is now available for eligible creators globally. The program, according to posts by X owner Elon Musk, aims to give out $5 million in the first round of creator payments.

Twitter is now X

The iconic bird logo is officially replaced with ‘X’ after Elon Musk announced the change the weekend of July 22. Notably, Musk x.com now also redirects to twitter.com. Musk also called this an “interim” logo, so we might see another logo change in the future.

The app also changed its official handle to @x as part of the ongoing rebranding. The original @Twitter handle is now inactive, and its bio reads, “This account is no longer active. Follow @x for updates.” However, the original owner of the @x handle , Gene X Hwang of the corporate photography and videography studio Orange Photography , confirmed to TechCrunch that the company took over his account without warning or financial compensation , telling him the handle is property of X.

https://t.co/bOUOek5Cvy now points to https://t.co/AYBszklpkE . Interim X logo goes live later today. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023

Twitter preps a job listing feature

Twitter hasn’t officially announced the job postings feature yet, although some verified organizations have already been able to post job listings under their bios. The job listings take applicants directly to the company’s website, where they can learn more about the position and submit an application.

Twitter Notes is back…kinda

Twitter Notes, the feature that allows Twitter users to publish long-form content , appears to be back on track, according to a post from Twitter owner Elon Musk on Tuesday. Musk confirmed the company’s plans in response to a user’s tweet which claimed the Twitter Notes project had recently been rebranded as “Articles.”

On Tuesday, July 18, user @FaustoChou tweeted that Notes had been renamed to Articles, signaling perhaps renewed development efforts on Twitter’s part. His screenshot showed the Notes interface, looking much like it did before, as well as other unlaunched features, like Twitter Coins. Musk replied to the tweet , confirming Twitter’s plans.

Twitter shares ad revenue with verified creators

Twitter will now pay creators for a share of the ad revenue earned from ads served in the replies to their posts. Twitter Blue subscribers who have earned more than 5 million tweet impressions each month for the last 3 months are eligible to join the creator payouts.

According to Elon Musk, the first round of creator payouts will total $5 million , and will be cumulative from the month of February onward. These payouts will be delivered via Stripe.

Despite the program’s significant payouts, some creators weren’t happy — and took their complaints to Twitter owner Elon Musk. In a series of tweets, Musk addressed creators’ concerns over things like the types of accounts that were eligible for monetization, rate limits and other issues .

With the announcement of new DM settings, Twitter admits to having a Verified spammer issue

Starting “as soon as” July 14 , Twitter will introduce a new messages setting aimed at reducing spam in DMs by moving messages from Verified users you don’t follow back to your “Message Request” inbox instead of your main inbox. Only messages from people you follow will arrive in your primary inbox going forward. Notably, these changes will also now apply to everyone who has their inboxes open to allow messages from anyone.

Before becoming pay-to-play, Twitter verification indicated a person was a public or notable figure of some sort — like a politician, celebrity, athlete, journalist or other well-known individual. By making the Verified blue checkmark accessible to anyone who purchased it, Twitter diluted the value of verification.

That apparently escalated to the point that people have become bothered by Verified users spamming their main inbox, when they had set it open to receive DMs from the blue-badged crowd. In other words, Twitter has a Verified user spam problem.

Twitter blocks links to Threads

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino is pushing back at reports that Twitter traffic is tanking as a result of the July 5 launch of a new competitor, Instagram Threads . However, on Monday, July 10, users reported that Twitter seems to be selectively blocking links to Threads.net’s website in Twitter searches, making it more difficult for anyone to surface conversations on Threads or locate users’ profiles.

Twitter threatens to sue Meta over its new Threads app

Less than 24 hours after Threads launched, the Elon Musk-owned company accused Meta of poaching former Twitter employees to create the new platform.

“Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” Spiro wrote in the letter , which Semafor shared online. “Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta.”

Only verified users will be able to access TweetDeck after 30 days from now

After swaths of users were unable to access parts of TweetDeck over the last few days , Twitter started rolling out a new version of the web app to users July 3. The company also added that in 30 days, users will have to be verified to access TweetDeck. This means only Twitter Blue subscribers, verified organizations and some folks who have been gifted verification by Twitter will be able to use TweetDeck come August.

Twitter limits the number of tweets users can read in a day

Twitter is putting limits to how many tweets its users can read as the social media platform suffers extended outage that has stymied users’ ability to track new posts.

Verified account holders can peruse a maximum of 6,000 posts daily, while unverified users must contend with a drastically reduced limit of 600 posts. Newly registered, unverified users face even tighter restrictions with an allowance of a mere 300 posts per day, according to Elon Musk. (He has since increased the limit to 10,000, 1,000 and 500, respectively.)

These read limits impacted TweetDeck users in particular, reporting major problems including notifications and entire columns failing to load.

Twitter requires an account to view tweets

If you’re not logged into your Twitter account, or don’t have one, and try to view a tweet, you’ll be presented with a sign-in screen. However, days later, Twitter silently removed the login requirement for viewing tweets .

When Twitter started enforcing the login requirement, Musk said that he took these “temporary” measures to prevent data scraping.

The company hasn’t made any official announcement about allowing users to view links when you aren’t logged in or given any details on what measures it has taken to stop scraping.

Subscribers can now post 25,000-character-long tweets

The company made the change to its Twitter Blue page today, indicating the limit. An engineer at Twitter, Prachi Poddar, also announced the change by posting a long tweet .

Twitter faces a $250 million lawsuit filed by major music publishers

The National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), representing 17 publishers, listed 1,700 songs for which it sent multiple copyright violation notices to Twitter. The lawsuit , filed in Federal District Court in Nashville, says that Twitter didn’t take any action against these notices. The publishers’ organization said in the filing that it is seeking fines of up to $150,000 for each violation.

The lawsuit alleged that the social network “fuels its business with countless infringing copies of musical ‘compositions, violating Publishers’ and others’ exclusive rights under copyright law.” It added that, unlike its competitors TikTok and Instagram, Twitter hasn’t struck a music licensing deal for the use of copyrighted music.

Twitter is being evicted from its Boulder office

Court documents show that Twitter owes three months’ rent to its Boulder landlord, and a judge has signed off on evicting the tech giant from that office.

In May the landlord took it to court, and on May 31 the judge issued an order that the sheriff should assist in the eviction of Twitter within the next 49 days — i.e. before the end of July. The case number is 2023CV30342 in Boulder District Court.

As many as 300 employees once worked in Twitter’s Boulder offices, but between layoffs, other firings, and resignations, it is probably less than half of that now.

Window to edit tweets is increased to one hour for Blue subscribers

The time limit to edit tweets has increased from 30 minutes to one hour for Blue subscribers, giving users a bigger window to change their tweets and correct any typos.

Linda Yaccarino is officially Twitter CEO

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino officially started her new gig on Monday, June 5, according to a tweet.

It happened — first day in the books! Stay tuned… — Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) June 6, 2023

Trust and safety lead resigns

Ella Irwin took over for Yoel Roth, who famously left the company during the early days of Elon Musk’s chaotic Twitter takeover.

Twitter launched Community Notes for images in posts

The latest feature is an effort to put more onus on crowdsourced moderation by allowing users to address scenarios of morphed images or AI-generated images across the platform where the photos are posted. The launches comes days after a fake AI-generated image about an attack on the Pentagon spread quickly as prominent accounts retweeted it.

Twitter’s new API tier costs $5,000 per month

Twitter API Pro for startups gives developers the ability to fetch 1 million tweets per month and post 300,000 tweets per month, and gives them access to the full archive search endpoint.

Twitter Blue users can now upload two-hour videos

Twitter made changes to its paid plan, allowing subscribers to upload two-hour videos — expanding the previous 60-minute limit .

The company also modified its Twitter Blue page and said the video file size limit for paid users is now increased from 2GB to 8GB. While earlier longer video upload was only possible from the web, now it’s also possible through the iOS app. Despite these changes, the maximum quality for upload still remains 1080p.

The rumors are confirmed: NBCU’s leader Linda Yaccarino as the next CEO of Twitter

Musk confirmed Yaccarino’s new role in a tweet this morning (May 12), a day after he announced that he had completed his search for a new CEO.

Elon Musk tweets that he has found a new CEO

“Excited to announce that I’ve a new CEO for X/Twitter,” Musk wrote in a tweet on May 11. “She will be starting in ~6 weeks! My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.”

Twitter released its first version of encrypted DMs

Currently, this feature is only available to verified Blue users or accounts associated with verified organizations. Additionally, the encryption feature isn’t compatible with group messages and Twitter doesn’t offer protection against man-in-the-middle attacks.

Twitter now allows you to react to DMs with emojis

Twitter has introduced a new feature that lets users choose almost any emoji to react to a DM in a conversation. Previously, the company allowed you to react to only the most recent DM with only a select set of emojis. CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the new feature is rolling out with the latest app update.

Twitter is purging old accounts and freeing up desired usernames, according to Elon Musk

According to recent tweets by owner Elon Musk, Twitter is purging inactive accounts that have had “no activity at all for several years.”

We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years, so you will probably see follower count drop — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 8, 2023

Twitter is contemplating a cheaper verification plan for organizations

Twitter is thinking about an organizational verification plan that doesn’t cost $1,000 a month. Over the Cinco de Mayo weekend, Elon Musk tweeted that the company is working on a cheaper plan for small businesses, but didn’t give any details about the cost.

We will have a lower cost tier for small businesses, but need to manage the onboarding of organizations carefully to prevent fraud. The $1000/month is meant for larger organizations. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2023

Twitter confirmed Circle tweets were temporarily not private

Twitter confirmed a security error that made Circle tweets surface publicly. TechCrunch reported the glitch in early April, but the platform confirmed the issue May 5 in an email sent to Twitter Circle users.

“In April 2023, a security incident may have allowed users outside of your Twitter Circle to see tweets that should have otherwise been limited to the Circle to which you were posting,” the email said. Twitter claims that the bug has now been fixed, and that the team knows what caused it.

Twitter makes its API free for public announcement accounts

Twitter announced on May 2 that it is making its API free for verified government or public-owned services posting about public utility alerts such as weather alerts, transportation information and emergency warnings. This comes a month after the company announced its new API pricing tiers .

A bug on Twitter causes legacy blue checks to reappear by updating your bio

It doesn’t seem to matter what text you’re adding to your bio — TechCrunch reporter Amanda Silberling added a few spaces, then got her check back for a moment. It even showed up with the old text that designates that she is “notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category,” and she did not, in fact, pay for this. But once you refresh the page it disappears. In fact, it’s unclear whether anyone else can even see your check briefly reappear.

EU warns Twitter over disinformation

Twitter was confirmed April 25 as one of 19 major tech platforms subject to centralized oversight by the European Union’s executive starting this fall, when so-called very large online platforms (VLOPs) are expected to be compliant with the Digital Services Act (DSA). But the Commission has not wasted any time warning the Elon Musk-owned social network that things aren’t looking good for staying on the right side of the incoming law.

In a pair of tweets , Vera Jourova, the EU’s values and transparency VP, warned of “yet another negative sign” by Twitter — accusing the platform under Musk of “not making digital information space any safer and free from the Kremlin #disinformation & malicious influence”.

Twitter now shows labels on tweets with reduced visibility

Twitter said that labels will be shown to both authors and viewers. Usually, these tweets will show text such as “Visibility limited: this Tweet may violate Twitter’s rules against Hateful Conduct.”

The app’s enforcement policy says that tweets with such labels will not show up in search results, recommendations or timelines — those tweets will be hidden in both the “For You” and “Following timelines. Additionally, there will be no ads placed adjacent to posts with reduced visibility.

Twitter restored Blue verification mark for top accounts, even if they didn’t pay for Twitter Blue

Over the April 21st weekend, multiple top accounts (with more than 1 million followers) got their verification marks back. However, many of them, including writer Neil Gaiman, footballer Riyad Mahrez, musician Lil Nas X, actress Janel Parrish Long and British TV presenter Richard Osman said that they didn’t pay for the blue badge.

In March, The New York Times reported that Twitter was considering handing out a free verification mark to the top 10,000 brands and companies. It’s not clear if the company is applying the same policy to personal accounts.

Twitter removes ‘government-funded’ news labels

Twitter has removed “government-funded media” labels on all accounts, from NPR to the Chinese state-affiliated Xinhua News. The app even appears to have deleted its web page explaining the “government-funded media” labels.

Twitter sends an email seemingly requiring advertisers to have a verified checkmark

Several users have posted screenshots of an email reportedly sent by Twitter, which states that starting from April 21, verified checkmarks are required to continue running ads on the platform.

WOW… Twitter is now telling advertisers it MUST subscribe to Twitter Blue or Verified Organisations to continue running ads! pic.twitter.com/4DrDu82Zi0 — Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) April 21, 2023

Twitter officially kills legacy blue checkmarks on 4/20

With the legacy checks gone , the app will have verification marks only for paid users and businesses, as well as government entities and officials. Now if a user sees a blue check mark and clicks on it, the label reads: “This account is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number.”

Microsoft drops Twitter from its advertising platform

Microsoft is dropping the bird app from its advertising platform starting on April 25, nearly two months after Twitter announced that it will begin charging a minimum of $42,000 per month to users of its API, including enterprises and research institutions. The moves mean users will no longer be able to access their account, or create, schedule or otherwise manage tweets through Microsoft’s free social media management service.

Twitter owner Elon Musk threatened to take legal action:

They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2023

Twitter quietly removes policy against misgendering trans people

Twitter updated its content moderation guidelines regarding hateful content, removing a policy that prohibited the targeted deadnaming or misgendering of transgender people. Enacted in 2018, the policy explicitly stated that it violated Twitter’s rules to repeatedly and purposefully call a transgender person by the wrong name or pronouns.

Twitter to label tweets that get downranked for violating its hate speech policy

Twitter plans to “soon” begin adding visible labels on tweets that have been identified as potentially violating its policies, which has impacted their visibility. It did not say when exactly the system would be fully rolled out across its network.

Typically, when tweets violate Twitter’s policies, one of the actions the company can take is to limit the reach of those tweets — or something it calls “visibility filtering.” In these scenarios, the tweets remain online but become less discoverable, as they’re excluded from areas like search results, trends, recommended notifications, For You and Following timelines, and more.

Historically, the wider public would not necessarily know if a tweet had been moderated in this way. Now Twitter says that will change.

10,000-character-long tweets for Blue subscribers

Twitter’s new feature will let Blue subscribers post 10,000-character-long posts — as if the social network is trying to compete with a rival newsletter platform . Twitter has also added support for bold and italic text formatting.

Long-form writing is also not entirely new. Last June, the company introduced a program called Twitter Notes for select writers . However, that program was shut down under Musk. After taking over the company he also killed newsletter tool Revue , a startup Twitter had acquired in 2021.

NPR, PBS and a handful of other news organizations bail on Twitter as Musk meddles with account labels

A PBS spokesperson confirmed to Axios that PBS had “no plans to resume tweeting” after Twitter gave it a murky “government-funded media” label over the weekend. A few other news entities appeared to have followed suit, including the prominent Boston NPR affiliate WBUR , Hawaii Public Radio and LA-based local news source LAist .

The Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC Australia), Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), New Zealand’s public broadcaster RNZ, Sweden’s SR Ekot and SVT, and Catalonia’s TV3.cat a were labeled “government-funded media” weeks later.

Twitter partners with eToro to show real-time stock and crypto information

This expands upon the social network’s Cashtag feature, which provided info about a limited number of stocks and crypto coins through TradingView data .

The new partnership with eToro goes beyond just displaying information. It also redirects users to the eToro site where they can engage in trading. If you search for a stock on Twitter, you will see a button saying “View on eToro,” which redirects to the site.

🎉Very excited to be launching a new $Cashtags partnership with @Twitter which will enable Twitter users to see real-time prices for a much wider range of stocks, crypto & other assets as well as having the option to invest through eToro. @elonmusk https://t.co/Iv2q9iNxbf — eToro (@eToro) April 13, 2023

Elon Musk says he only bought Twitter because he thought he’d be forced to

Elon Musk gave a rare interview to an actual reporter late on Tuesday, speaking to BBC reporter James Clayton on Twitter Spaces. During the interview , Clayton pressed Musk on whether his purchase of Twitter was, in the end, something he went through with willingly, or whether it was something he did because the active court case at the time in which Twitter was trying to force him to go through with the sale was going badly.

The answer was that Musk did indeed only do the deal because he believed legally, he was going to be forced to do so anyway.

Elon Musk says Twitter will officially remove legacy checkmarks on 4/20

This is the “final date,” he said in a tweet. If the move goes through, Twitter will have verification marks only for paid users and businesses, and government entities and officials.

Final date for removing legacy Blue checks is 4/20 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 11, 2023

Twitter, Inc. is now X Corp.

Twitter, Inc. is now called X Corp., according to a court filing in California.

Since Twitter is no longer a public company, it does not have to report updates like name changes to the SEC. But in any case, the new name was spotted in an April 4 document related to far-right activist Laura Loomer’s lawsuit against Twitter and Facebook.

“Twitter, Inc. has been merged into X Corp. and no longer exists,” the document states.

Ex-Twitter CEO and other execs sue firm over unpaid legal bills

The lawsuit , filed in Delaware Chancery Court, alleged that Twitter has to pay more than $1 million to the former executives for legal bills they incurred while at the company to respond to requests by the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission.

Twitter Circle tweets aren’t very private

Numerous Twitter users reported a bug on April 10 in which Circle tweets are surfacing on the algorithmically generated For You timeline. That means that your supposedly private posts might breach containment to reach an unintended audience, which could quickly spark some uncomfortable situations.

TechCrunch has spoken to multiple users who have also experienced this glitch firsthand; many more have reported the glitch in their tweets. Most often, it seems that Circle tweets are being surfaced in the For You timeline to users who follow the poster, but are not in their Circle. Others have reported that their Circle tweets are reaching even further than those who follow them.

A year later, Twitter is now resurfacing official Russian accounts in search results

The Elon Musk-owned platform has resumed surfacing accounts of Vladimir Putin and the Russian Embassy in search results. A former Twitter employee told the publication that this move is likely because of a policy change.

Twitter won’t let you retweet, like or reply to Substack links

Twitter is censoring Substack links by making the posts impossible to reply to, like or retweet. While quote-tweeting works, simply pressing the retweet button surfaces an error message: “Some actions on this Tweet have been disabled by Twitter.”

You didn’t hear this from us, but if you link to a Substack via a redirected URL, it seems to post without restrictions.

Twitter Blue subscribers will now be shown ‘half ads’ on the platform

Twitter is rolling out additional features for Blue subscribers including showing 50% of ads in their timeline compared to non-paid users and a visibility boost in search.

“As you scroll, you will see approximately twice as many organic or non-promoted Tweets placed in between promoted Tweets or ads. There may be times when there are more or fewer non-promoted Tweets between promoted Tweets,” Twitter’s description of the feature says.

While Twitter is claiming to reduce ads on paid subscribers’ feeds, it is hard to prove if they are actually seeing fewer ads apart from anecdotal experiences.

Twitter singles NPR out with misleading state-backed media label

NPR’s Twitter account on the platform now comes with a tag denoting it as “US state-affiliated media.” But NPR doesn’t meet Twitter’s own definition for a state-affiliated account:

State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution… State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy.

GET REKT @NPR Nicely done, @elonmusk 🤣 pic.twitter.com/jvX15QWSf5 — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 5, 2023

NPR later announced that it will no longer be posting content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform.

Twitter’s verification changes feel like an accidental April Fools’ joke

Musk had claimed that starting on April 1, blue checkmarks that previously indicated that an account was legitimate, verified and notable would be maintained only for those who have a subscription to Twitter Blue. The change would be part of a wider push for Twitter to gate previously free features, and bundle new ones, under the $8 per month Twitter Blue subscription, which costs $11 on iOS and Android devices.

As numerous celebrities and businesses spoke out to say they wouldn’t pay the $8 fee, it appeared that removing so many blue checks would be easier said than done. Instead, Twitter merely updated the text accompanying a blue check to make it unclear whether someone was verified for being notable, or for paying for Twitter Blue. In an ultimate act of pettiness, Twitter removed The New York Times’ verification check when the news giant said it wouldn’t pay for verification.

Based on early returns, the revamped Twitter Blue has yet to contribute significantly to Twitter’s bottom line , with just $11 million generated from mobile signups in its first three months.

Twitter announces new API tiers; free, basic and enterprise levels

The three API tiers include a free level meant for content posting bots, a $100/month basic level and a costly enterprise level. Subscribing to any level gets access to the Ads API at no additional cost.

Twitter mentioned that over the next 30 days, the company will discontinue old access levels, including Standard (for v1.1), Essential and Elevated (for v2), and Premium.

Developers remain unhappy with Twitter’s new API structure.

Introducing a new form of Free (v2) access for write-only use cases and those testing the Twitter API with 1,500 Tweets/month at the app level, media upload endpoints, and Login with Twitter. Get started: https://t.co/CqCRD3vbE5 — Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) March 29, 2023

Elon Musk says Twitter will only show verified accounts on its “For You” timeline starting April 15

Musk justified the move by saying this was the “only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over.”

Starting April 15th, only verified accounts will be eligible to be in For You recommendations. The is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over. It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle. Voting in polls will require verification for same reason. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 27, 2023

New Twitter accounts now have to wait only 30 days to purchase Twitter Blue

Twitter decreases the wait to purchase Twitter Blue for newly created Twitter accounts from 90 days to 30 days.

“New subscriptions to Twitter Blue are available globally on web, iOS, or Android. Not all features are available on all platforms. Newly created Twitter accounts will not be able to subscribe to Twitter Blue for 30 days. We may also impose waiting periods for new accounts in the future at our discretion, and without notice,” the Twitter Blue page reads.

Twitter to kill ‘legacy’ blue checks on April 1

Twitter announced that the removal of legacy blue checkmarks will begin April 1 for users that are not subscribed to Twitter Blue.

Elon tweeted back in December that the company will remove legacy checkmarks “in a few months.” After that, users with legacy blue checks had been seeing a pop-up when they clicked on their checkmark, which read, “This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable .” But once Twitter botched this removal of checkmarks, they changed the copy again — as of now, users cannot distinguish whether someone has a checkmark because they paid, or because they were deemed notable.

On April 1st, we will begin winding down our legacy verified program and removing legacy verified checkmarks. To keep your blue checkmark on Twitter, individuals can sign up for Twitter Blue here: https://t.co/gzpCcwOpLp Organizations can sign up for https://t.co/RlN5BbuGA3 … — Twitter Verified (@verified) March 23, 2023

Twitter’s privacy-preserving Tor service goes dark

Twitter’s Tor service , a version of the site that could be accessed even in countries where the social network is banned, has gone dark after the company failed to renew its certificate, which expired on March 6.

Pavel Zoneff, director of strategic communications at the Tor Project, told TechCrunch that the site “is no longer available seemingly with no plans to renew.”

Twitter Blue is now available in more than 20 countries

This expansion makes the social network’s subscription service available in more than 35 countries across the world.

These countries include Netherlands, Poland, Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, Romania, Czech Republic, Finland, Denmark, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Slovakia, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Croatia, Luxembourg, Malta and Cyprus.

February 2023

Layoffs continue.

Twitter laid off more than 200 employees in its fourth round of cuts, including loyalist Esther Crawford — the chief executive of Twitter payments who oversaw the company’s Twitter Blue verification subscription.

Twitter’s staff is down from about 7,500 employees to less than 2,000 since Musk.

Lots of speculation among ex employees that Musk must be about to install a whole new regime and that’s why he is cleaning house. Otherwise the cuts don’t make sense. “Hard to keep the lights on with the people who are still left,” one ex manager told me. — Alex Heath (@alexeheath) February 26, 2023

One of the numerous rounds of cuts eliminated the platform’s entire accessibility team. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) called on Elon Musk to bring the accessibility team back in an open letter . Markey requested a response by March 17.

Twitter allows cannabis ads in states where it’s legal

After updating its ad policy on February 15, Twitter became the first social media app in the U.S. to allow cannabis advertising. Cannabis ads will run on Twitter in U.S. states where cannabis is legal and in Canada.

Twitter delays launch of its new API platform…again

The initial date set to cut free access to Twitter’s API was February 9, which was then extended to February 13. Now, the social network has delayed the shutdown again, this time with no date set.

There has been an immense amount of enthusiasm for the upcoming changes with Twitter API. As part of our efforts to create an optimal experience for the developer community, we will be delaying the launch of our new API platform by a few more days. More information to follow… — Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) February 13, 2023

The delay jeopardizes the plans of developers and startups building tools around the Twitter API as they wouldn’t have any clarity on future spending and budget allocation on the developer platform.

Twitter’s basic tier of its API will cost $100 per month

The company originally planned to shut down free access to its API on February 9. Now it has extended this deadline to February 13. Twitter said that it will charge $100 per month for the basic tier of API. This will get developers access to a “low level of API usage,” as well as the Ads API.

We have been busy with some updates to the Twitter API so you can continue to build and innovate with us. We’re excited to announce an extension of the current free Twitter API access through February 13. Here’s what we’re shipping then 🧵 — Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) February 8, 2023

When developers trying to seek clarity around the new API rules went to the developer forum website , they found that the site had been put behind a login . The forum was finally accessible four days later on February 13.

Twitter Blue introduces 4,000-character tweets

Twitter announced the ability to post longer tweets for paid users on February 8. Instead of being limited to 280 characters, paying Blue subscribers can post tweets that are up to 4,000 characters.

While only Twitter Blue subscribers can post long tweets, all users will be able to read them. You will see only the first 280 characters on the timeline, and if you want to read more, you can click on “Show more.”

need more than 280 characters to express yourself? we know that lots of you do… and while we love a good thread, sometimes you just want to Tweet everything all at once. we get that. so we’re introducing longer Tweets! you’re gonna want to check this out. tap this 👉… — Twitter Blue (@TwitterBlue) February 8, 2023

Elon Musk claims Twitter will start sharing ad revenue with creators

Elon Musk announced in a tweet on February 3 that the company would soon begin sharing advertising revenue with creators on the platform for the first time. He follows up the announcement with a catch: Eligible users must be signed up for Twitter Blue.

Payouts have yet to reach creators’ wallets .

More monetization pushes: Twitter Blue expands new countries, brings back Spaces curation

Twitter Blue subscriptions are now available in Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain, making it 12 regions in total to which users can subscribe to it as of February 2. On February 8, Twitter Blue extended services further to India, Indonesia and Brazil .

Twitter also announced launching a new Spaces tab with curated stations for live and recorded spaces, along with podcasts. The social network is making podcasts available only to Blue subscribers and “some people on Twitter for iOS and Twitter for Android apps.”

Twitter to end free access to its API

Twitter will discontinue offering free access to the Twitter API starting February 9 and will launch a paid version, Twitter said as it looks for more avenues to monetize the platform.

Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead 🧵 — Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) February 2, 2023

A week later and days before the February 9 deadline, Elon Musk said that after getting feedback from developers, Twitter will provide a write-only API for “bots providing good content that is free.”

Twitter discontinues CoTweets

Twitter announced February 1 that it is discontinuing CoTweeting, a feature that allowed two users to co-author a tweet. Users will be able to view the set of co-tweets for a month. After that, they will be automatically converted to retweets on the co-author’s profile.

Screenshot of Twitter's new policy in sunsetting CoTweets

January 2023

Twitter partners with doubleverify and ias on brand safety initiative.

Due to declining ad revenue and advertiser exits , Twitter announced on January 25 that it has teamed up with adtech companies DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science (IAS) to tell advertisers if their ad is placed around inappropriate content. The program, available first for U.S.-based advertising campaigns, allows brands to analyze the content adjacent to — primarily tweets above and below the ad — all types of ads, including promoted tweets.

Twitter rolls out its bookmark feature on iOS

The new design displays the bookmark button under the expanded tweet view, making it easier to add a post to your bookmarks.

Before the change, you had to tap on the share button to open the sharing card and then tap on the bookmark option to save a tweet. In addition to the new button, as soon as you tap on the button, you will see a banner at the top of the screen that says “Show all bookmarks.”

The option is currently visible only on the iOS app, but we can expect that Twitter will roll this out to Android and the web soon.

Image Credits: Twitter

Twitter quietly bans third-party clients

After cutting off prominent app makers like Tweetbot and Twitterific, Twitter quietly updated its developer terms to ban third-party clients altogether on January 19.

The “restrictions” section of the company’s developer agreement was updated with a clause prohibiting “use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.” Earlier in the week, the company said that it was “enforcing long-standing API rules” in disallowing clients access to its platform but didn’t cite which specific rules developers were violating.

As a result, third-party Twitter clients began offloading their apps from App Stores .

How the recently shuttered third-party apps contributed to Twitter’s development

Twitter now offers an annual Blue subscription

Users now have a chance to get a discount for $84/year if they purchase an annual Blue subscription on the web.

Twitter Blue, including the new annual plan, is currently available in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan .

monthly and annual pricing for Twitter Blue for iOS and Web depending on country

Twitter HQ furniture auctions

In a strange attempt to make money, Twitter is auctioning off surplus office furniture (auction is now closed) that it doesn’t need anymore, now that thousands of employees have either left the company or been laid off . When you’re rapidly losing advertisers and apparently not paying your rent , why not go for the hail mary?

Twitter makes algorithmic “For You” timeline the default

The company has tried to pull this stunt previously , only to give the option to switch back to a chronological timeline after a lot of backlashes .

What’s different this time? The Elon Musk-led company is now showing both algorithmic and chronological feeds side-by-side. Users can switch between them by swiping on their phone screens. Until now, users had to tap on the sparkle icon in the top-right corner to switch between the “Home” and “Latest” timelines. Twitter is justifying its latest change by saying that users can now easily swipe between the renamed “For You” and “Following” timelines.

January 13: Twitter rolled out the dual-timeline update to the web but at that time the social network used to remember your choice.
January 20: The company made the “For You” feed default on the web when users first opened Twitter in a tab or refreshed the page.
January 24: Now, Twitter remembers your choices again.
February 7: Twitter remembers your choices again on iOS and Android , too.

You can now easily switch between “For you” and “Following” on web. Android coming soon 👀 — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) January 13, 2023

Twitter’s advanced search filters for mobile are said to be coming soon

According to social media analyst Matt Navarra, Twitter’s advanced search filters for mobile are coming soon.

Here’s what it looks like:

NEW! Twitter Advanced Search feature on iOS is coming soon 👀👇 https://t.co/ae56yE3JTU pic.twitter.com/xbQUpQJAlS — Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) January 4, 2023

Twitter lifts the political ad ban to bolster revenue

The company originally enforced the ban back in 2019 . At that time, it said that “political message reach should be earned, not bought.” Twitter charted a different path from other social networks like Facebook and Instagram, which allowed political ads.

The company’s announcement to lift the political ad ban comes at a time when advertisers have been pulling back spending on the platform, and the company has been cutting down its internal revenue projections.

December 2022

Twitter blue users can now upload 60-minute videos.

On December 23, the Twitter Blue page was updated declaring that subscribers can now upload 60-minute videos from the web at 1080p resolution and 2GB in file size.

Layoffs continue, impacting employees in public policy, engineering

According to posts on Twitter and LinkedIn from a former public policy employee on December 22, Twitter cut half of its public policy team.

The company also laid off some engineers in infrastructure via email on December 16. Across all of Twitter, it’s estimated that about 75% of employees have either chosen to leave or have been laid off since Elon Musk took ownership of the company in October.

Twitter now displays stock and cryptocurrency prices directly in search results

To access the new feature, users have to just type the dollar symbol followed by the relevant ticker symbol, e.g. “$GOOG” or “$ETH” (minus the quote marks), in the search bar and Twitter will display the current price. This also works without using the $ symbol in some instances, but it’s less consistent and doesn’t always return the stock or crypto prices as requested.

If someone wants to know more details about a stock or cryptocurrency, they can hit the “View on Robinhood” button.

$Cashtags, now with data 📈 👀 $SPY 👇 pic.twitter.com/XgOK6gf02E — Twitter Business (@TwitterBusiness) December 21, 2022

You can now see how many people view your tweets

A tweet’s View Count will be visible to everyone, not just the owner of the account.

“Twitter is rolling out View Count, so you can see how many times a tweet has been seen! This is normal for video,” Elon Musk wrote in a tweet . “Shows how much more alive Twitter is than it may seem, as over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply or like, as those are public actions.”

Twitter Blue for Business now allows companies to identify their employees

Twitter’s product manager Esther Crawford said the social media platform is launching a pilot program for Blue for Business with select businesses. The company plans to expand this to more organizations next year.

We’re launching the pilot of Blue for Business so beginning today you’ll start seeing company badges on select profiles. We’ll soon be expanding the program and look forward to having more businesses added in the new year! https://t.co/ytnMRO5rcE — Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) December 19, 2022

Twitter goes on an account suspension spree, including prominent journalists

A day after Twitter crafted a new policy to explain its decision to ban an account that tracks Elon Musk’s private jet , Twitter also suspended its open source competitor Mastodon from the service.

Within the same day, Twitter suspended a number of prominent journalists on the platform without warning. “Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else,” Elon Musk tweeted in a reply about the journalists’ suspensions.

The company seemingly had a glitch that allowed banned users to still participate in Twitter Spaces. A group of the banned journalists started a group conversation on Spaces where Musk himself joined in. Shortly after, the app pulled its Spaces group audio feature temporarily.

Twitter shuts down Revue, its newsletter platform

Revue, the newsletter platform acquired by Twitter in January 2021, sent a message to newsletter writers on December 14 declaring, “We’ve made the difficult decision to shut down Revue.” Writers had until January 18, 2023 to retrieve their data before everything was deleted.

Twitter disperses the Trust & Safety Council

Twitter dispersed the advisory group consisting of roughly 100 independent researchers and human rights activists from around the world. The council members received an email on Monday, December 12 from the company saying that the Trust & Safety Council is “not the best structure” to get external insights into the company product and policy strategy.

Elon Musk says Twitter will remove all legacy verifications ‘in a few months’

Twitter will remove all legacy blue checkmarks “in a few months,” Elon Musk tweeted on December 12. Before Musk bought Twitter, checkmarks were used to verify individuals and entities as active, authentic and notable accounts of interest.

This past week, many blue checkmark holders have been seeing a pop-up when they click on their blue checkmark that reads, “This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable.”

Twitter Blue relaunches with new verification process, plus Blue for Business

Twitter is officially bringing back the Twitter Blue subscription on December 12, starting in five countries before rapidly expanding to others . The app updated its terms to specify that users will need to verify their phone numbers before purchasing the Twitter Blue subscription.

Web sign-ups will cost $8 per month and iOS sign ups will cost $11 per month for “access to subscriber-only features, including the blue checkmark,” per a tweet from the company account. Twitter Blue became available on Android at the same price as iOS in January 2023.

In addition to the relaunch of Twitter Blue, the company also began rolling out a new offering called Blue for Business that adds a gold checkmark to company accounts.

Twitter’s Community Notes feature is now global

Community Notes, previously known as Birdwatch, are now visible around the world. Community Notes is the social media giant’s crowdsourced fact-checking system.

Moderators who are part of the program can add notes to tweets to add context and users can then vote if they determine the context to be helpful. Prior to this global expansion, Community Notes were only visible to users in the U.S. Twitter added moderators from the U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand in January 2023.

Twitter announces charging $11 on iOS for Blue subscription to offset App Store fees

When Twitter launched its new subscription plan with a verification mark on November 9, it charged users $7.99 per month. In an attempt to offset App Store fees, the company is charging iOS users $11 for the new subscription plan — though the Twitter Blue plan is on halt.

November 2022

Twitter’s community notes updated to better address ‘low quality’ contributions.

The platform’s crowdsourced fact-checking system, Community Notes, are notes written by users that are appended to tweets to provide further clarification and context.

The Community Notes algorithm change involves scoring notes where contributors explain why a tweet shouldn’t be deemed misleading.

Twitter announces a new multicolored verification system

Elon Musk announces that Twitter will tentatively roll out a new multicolored verification system where companies will get a gold checkmark, government officials will get a grey checkmark and the blue checkmark will be dedicated to individuals even if they are not celebrities. That means the blue checkmark will be used with legacy verified accounts and folks who buy the company’s proposed $8 per month paid plan .

If you’re confused about all the checkmarks, you’re not alone. Here’s a quick guide on what each checkmark and badge means.

Twitter Blue verification chaos ensues

On November 9, CEO Elon Musk floated changes to Twitter’s system for verifying user accounts, including charging $8 per month for it . The social media company seemingly began rolling out a new tier of Twitter Blue, its premium subscription service. According to a tweet by Esther Crawford, a former product lead, the new Twitter Blue plan wasn’t yet live, but some users saw notifications as part of a live test.

The new Blue isn’t live yet — the sprint to our launch continues but some folks may see us making updates because we are testing and pushing changes in real-time. The Twitter team is legendary. 🫡 New Blue… coming soon! https://t.co/ewTSTjx3t7 — Esther Crawford ✨ (@esthercrawford) November 5, 2022

The company also launched grey-colored official checkmarks for notable accounts such as companies and politicians. But within hours of the launch, Elon Musk killed it. Crawford clarified that the grey “Official” labels are still going out as part of the new Twitter Blue product.

The new $8 Twitter Blue plan began rolling out to iOS users in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K with the only feature available at the time being the blue “verified” checkmark. This caused a number of fake accounts pretending to be celebrities, brands and otherwise influential people to create accounts and spread misinformation.

The Twitter exodus begins with mass layoffs and exits

Elon Musk laid off 3,700 people on November 3, almost half its staff, shortly after completing the acquisition. Twitter was sued in a class action lawsuit in response to not giving employees advance notice of a mass layoff, alleging Twitter violated worker protection laws.

A week later, the app reached out to some former employees to return as they were laid off “by mistake.”

In addition to layoffs, a round of executive departures also swept through the company. In Musk’s first email to his new staff , he talked about ending remote work and making the fight against spam a priority.

Musk poses workers with a choice: quit Twitter, or prepare to get ‘hardcore’

October 2022

Elon musk is revamping twitter’s verification system.

Twitter begins overhauling a new and more expensive version of Twitter Blue, the platform’s paid plan, that will reportedly cost $19.99 per month and give users a verified badge. At the time, Twitter Blue cost $4.99 per month in the U.S.

According to a report from The Verge , the company plans to remove verification badges from current holders if they don’t pay for Twitter Blue within 90 days of launching the new verification system.

Elon Musk officially owns Twitter

Elon Musk closed on his $44 billion acquisition of the bird app on October 27, 2022. The deal came after months of legal drama , bad memes and will-they-or-won’t-they-chaos . After sealing the deal, Musk took Twitter private and began clearing house . On day one, he fired former CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, general counsel Sean Edgett and head of Legal, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde.

Jeff Bezos snaps up a 3rd Miami-area mansion for $90 million

Jeff Bezos just bought a third mansion on the Miami-area island known as Billionaire Bunker.
Bezos paid $90 million for the home, which last sold in 1998 for $2.5 million, Bloomberg reported .
He previously purchased multiple neighboring Seattle-area homes for his security and staff.

Jeff Bezos is buying up more pricey property on an uberexclusive Miami-area island as he moves cross-country from Seattle.

The billionaire Amazon founder purchased a third home on Indian Creek island for $90 million in an off-market transaction, Bloomberg reported .

A representative for Bezos declined to comment.

Watch: How Elon Musk makes and spends his billions

Main content

Exclusive: Tesla scraps low-cost car plans amid fierce Chinese EV competition

Tesla hands over first cars produced at new plant in Gruenheide

Entry-level Tesla car won’t be built, three sources tell Reuters
Tesla to focus on self-driving taxis instead, sources said
Strategy shift comes as Tesla faces competition from China EV makers including BYD

‘HALT ALL FURTHER ACTIVITIES’

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Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco, Norihiko Shirouzu in Austin and Ben Klayman in Detroit. Editing by Marla Dickerson and Brian Thevenot.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tab

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Is the Detroit Bureau Chief and North American Transportation Editor, responsible for a team of about 10 reporters covering everything from autos to aerospace to airlines to outer space.

FAA says Southwest plane with Boeing engine cowling fell off during takeoff

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Sunday said a Southwest Airlines airplane returned to Denver International Airport after the crew reported the engine cowling fell off during takeoff and struck the wing flap.

The international Milipol security fair in Villepinte near Paris

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Unveiling the Mind of Elon Musk: 55 Quotes That Define His Vision and
Inspirational Quotes by Elon Musk. 1. "When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.". 2. "I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.". 3. "Pay attention to negative feedback, and solicit it, particularly from friends.". 4.
TOP 25 QUOTES BY ELON MUSK (of 217)
56 Copy quote. Many things are improbable, only a few are impossible. Elon Musk. Impossible, Improbable. 50 Copy quote. Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster. Elon Musk. People, Needs, Alternatives. "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.
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Elon Musk Biography: Visionary Entrepreneur and Innovator. Elon Musk, a name synonymous with groundbreaking technological advancements, is a visionary entrepreneur, inventor, and business magnate. Born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk's journey has been nothing short of extraordinary. ... Elon Musk Quotes: Wisdom for a ...
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Elon Musk. Patience is a virtue, and I'm learning patience. It's a tough lesson. Elon Musk. I'd rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right. Elon Musk. I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better.
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Elon Musk is the first official biography of the creator of SolarCity, SpaceX and Tesla, based on over 30 hours of conversation time between author Ashlee Vance and Musk himself, highlighting his complicated childhood, the way he makes decisions and navigates the world, and how he managed to disrupt multiple industries, all with the goal of ...
Elon Musk
8 March 2016 50-innovation-quotes-from-spacex-founder-elon-musk. The probability of death is quite high on the first [human] mission [to Mars]. 27 September 2016 "Elon Musk's Plan To Colonize Mars Gives Us The Sci-Fi Future We Crave: Now let's see if he can make it reality." Popular Science magazine; It would be an incredible adventure.
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9 likes. Like. « previous 1 2 3 next ». 85 quotes from Elon Musk: 'When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour.', '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 ...
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Open Preview. Elon Musk Quotes Showing 1-30 of 705. "Good ideas are always crazy until they're not.". ― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future. 235 likes. Like. "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,". ― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk ...
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Elon Musk Quotes About Leadership. "If you're a 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.". "People work better when they know what the goal is and why.
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Ashlee Vance, in his new biography of the celebrity industrialist Elon Musk, delivers a similar notion of the deflating American soul. An early Facebook engineer tells Mr. Vance, "The best minds ...
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Elon Musk Quotes on Innovation, Technology, Future. 30. Innovation should evolve. " It's important to create an environment that fosters innovation, but you want to let it evolve in a Darwinian way. You don't want to, at a high level, at a gut level, pick a technology and decide that that's the thing that's going to win because it may ...
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ELON MUSK, by Walter Isaacson. At various moments in "Elon Musk," Walter Isaacson's new biography of the world's richest person, the author tries to make sense of the billionaire ...
Elon Musk
Elon Musk (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa) South African -born American entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment firm PayPal and formed SpaceX, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was also one of the first significant investors in, as well as chief executive officer of, the electric car manufacturer Tesla.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk is a South African-born American entrepreneur and businessman who founded X.com in 1999 (which later became PayPal), SpaceX in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003.
Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa's administrative capital. He is of British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. His mother, Maye Musk (née Haldeman), is a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa. His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, emerald dealer, and property ...
100+ Inspirational Elon Musk Quotes: Leading With Tenacity
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E lon Musk has had a futuristic mindset since he was a young boy, when he sold his first software — a game called Blastar — at age 11.. He went on to found and sell a startup to Compaq for ...
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Elon Musk Quotes Showing 1-30 of 271. "The family adopted a motto: "Live dangerously—carefully.". ― Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk. 14 likes. Like. "If you were negative or thought something couldn't be done, you were not invited to the next meeting," Mueller recalls. "He just wanted people who would make things happen ...
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Elon Musk Quotes "I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary" - Elon Musk "When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor." - Elon Musk "My proceeds from the PayPal acquisition were $180 million. I put $100 million in SpaceX, $70m in Tesla, and $10m in Solar City.
Musk family
The Musk family is a wealthy family of South African origin that is largely active in the United States and Canada.The Musks are of English, Anglo-Canadian, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Swiss descent. The family is known for its entrepreneurial endeavours. Elon Musk was formerly the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$232 billion as of December 2023, according to the ...
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Welcome to Elon Musk's Twitter (now X), where the rules are made up and the check marks don't matter. ... The lawsuit quotes Walter Isaacson's biography of Musk, which quotes the X CEO as ...
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Elon Musk Quotes. Quotes tagged as "elon-musk" Showing 1-30 of 58. "Threads snap.You would lose your way in the labyrinth.". ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. tags: elon-musk , humor , labyrinth , mark , metaverse , threads , twitter. 1 likes. Like. " [Musk] concluded that Trump as president was no different than he was as a ...
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Apr 2, 2024, 9:34 AM PDT. Jeff Bezos. Dave J. Hogan/Getty Images. Jeff Bezos just bought a third mansion on the Miami-area island known as Billionaire Bunker. Bezos paid $90 million for the home ...
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62 Motivational Elon Musk Quotes on Success and Leadership

RELATED: E lon Musk Now Owns Twitter, and 6 Other Facts – Is He the IRL Tony Stark?

Elon Musk Quotes About Success

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

“I take the position that I’m always to some degree wrong, and the aspiration is to be less wrong.”

“As much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs. MBA programs don’t teach people how to create companies.”

“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.”

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Elon Musk Quotes on Learning & Logic

2. Being where the action is.

3. Obsessing over ideas.

4. Deciding what work to do.

5. Being a part of the web revolution.

6. Motivating students and accelerated learning.

7. Critical thinking and filter bubbles.

8. First principles thinking and reasoning by analogy.

9. Answer the ‘why’ of education.

10. Learning more than you think you can.

11. On being dedicated to learning something new.

12. Structured format of grade school.

13. The value of the truth.

Elon Musk Quotes on Business

15. The value of profit.

16. Creating a compelling company.

17. 40-hour workweek.

18. Approving and executing on ideas.

19. Creating companies.

20. Having good people.

21. Personality matters.

“As much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs. MBA programs don’t teach people how to create companies.”

“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.”