Elon Musk is probably one of the first faces that come to your mind when you think of “success”. The entrepreneur seems to have his finger in almost any modern-day gadget or system we are using: from online payment systems, electric cars, energy production, and space exploration.
He is the epitome of start-up success and an icon for many. No wonder he is paving the way and writing the handbook about the future of social entrepreneurship.
Elon Musk doesn’t shy away from talking about his failures either. This goes to show even further how confident he actually is in running his businesses. After all, no one can only be successful – it’s important to experience failure and learn from it, so you can grow better.
Elon is a daring risk-taker, who has accomplished the impossible – multiple times. One thing he continuously does right? He doesn’t listen to the opinions of ill-tongued people. If he did, he wouldn’t have sold his first game at age 12 and co-founded PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX.
Dreaming big is only one part of the equation, however. What truly matters is being able to see these dreams through and have the power to turn them into reality. How does he do that?
Well, I don’t quite know myself. But here are some success quotes from the man himself. See what you can learn from them and apply them to your own life.
Elon Musk On Success and Failure
1. “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”
2. “If you buy a ticket to hell, it isn’t fair to blame hell.”
3. “If something is important enough, you do it even if the odds aren’t in your favor.”
4. “When I was a little kid, I was really scared of the dark. But then I came to understand, dark just means the absence of photons in the visible wavelength – 400 to 700 nanometers. Then I thought, well, it’s really silly to be afraid of a lack of photons. Then I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore after that.”
5. “I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I just try to think about the future and not be sad”
6. “I really like computer games, but then if I made really great computer games, how much effect would that have on the world.”
7. “Life needs to be more than just solving problems every day. You need to wake up and be excited about the future.”
8. “I was raised by books. Books, and then my parents.”
9. “Education is basically downloading data and algorithms into your brain.”
10. “I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”
11. “If something is important enough, you should try even if the probable outcome is failure.”
12. “With automation comes abundance.”
Inspiring Quotes by Elon Musk
13. “Whatever area that you get into, given that, even if you’re the best of the best, there’s always a chance of failure. So, I think it’s important that you really like whatever you’re doing. If you don’t like it, life is too short. And also, if you like what you are doing, you think about it even when you are not working. It’s something your mind is drawn to. And if you don’t like it, you just really can’t make it work I think.”
14. “Never chase the next hot thing. Stop trying to chase the wave. You will never catch it. You always for the most part find out about that stuff too late. Instead, do what you are really passionate about, what you really love. That will position you before the wave even hits, and you will find out about whatever it is before the wave starts before it gets hot, and that is how you take advantage.”
15. “There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future?”
16. “I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”
17. “It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”
18. “My children didn’t choose to be born, I chose to have children. They owe me nothing, I owe them everything”
19. “Science is discovering the essential truths about what exists in the Universe, engineering is about creating things that never existed”
20. “It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree – make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”
Elon Musk Quotes on Accepting Failure and Criticism
21. “You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.”
22. “You get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of problems you solve.”
23. “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.”
24. “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.”
25. “Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of whatever you’re doing is as valuable as gold.”
26. “No, I don’t ever give up. I’d have to be dead or completely incapacitated.”
27. “If you need inspiration, don’t do it.”
28. “The first step is to establish that something is possible then probability will occur.”
29. “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.”
30. “Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.”
31. “I take the position that I’m always to some degree wrong, and the aspiration is to be less wrong.”
32. “Constantly think about how you could be doing things better.”
33. “One of the biggest mistakes we made was trying to automate things that are super easy for a person to do, but super hard for a robot to do.”
34. “They were building a Ferrari for every launch when it was possible that a Honda Accord might do the trick.”
35. “Every person in your company is a vector. Your progress is determined by the sum of all vectors. ”
Blogger, dreamer, procrastinator, and lover of everything soul-touching. My mission is to make you laugh, provoke your thoughts, light up your day and inspire you to fall in love with life and yourself.
