Elon Musk

"I think the key is to really listen to the engineers and designers doing the work."

"Most of the constraints are self-imposed."

"You need to make sure that you're doing the work for the right reasons."

"I don't think we should have AI that is not controllable."

"Liking memes is a form of consciousness."

"The vacuum in space is not a bad thing for rockets."

"I think people overestimate what they can do in 1 year, but underestimate what they can do in 10."

"Make the product better and better and better until it's really good."

"Life is fundamentally about survival and replication of information."

"Don't waste time on revenge. The best revenge is massive success."

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

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

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

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

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

"Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week."

"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."

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

"Don't delude yourself into thinking something's working when it's not."

"It's OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket."

"The key to making an evolutionary leap is to be physically present."

"I think that's the best part about working on extremely hard problems—if you solve them, it's incredibly rewarding."

"People work better when they know what the goal is and why."

"Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen."

"Creating companies is for losers. Bands are cool."

"If you need investors' approval to do the right thing, you're in the wrong place."

"I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy."

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

"I'm interested in things that change the world or that affect the future."

"You shouldn't do things just because everyone else does."