Elon Musk

SpaceX is only 12 years old now. Between now and 2040, the company's lifespan will have tripled. If we have linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people. ”

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 hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company. ”

Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world. ”

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

It is definitely true that the fundamental enabling technology for electric cars is lithium-ion as a cell chemistry technology. In the absence of that, I don't think it's possible to make an electric car that is competitive with a gasoline car. ”

In the early days of aviation, there was a great deal of experimentation and a high death rate. ”

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. ”

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, your job is going to be quite miserable. ”

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