The 20 Best Success Quotes from Elon Musk
The Mentality that Makes Elon Musk a Winner
Elon Musk is the real-world version of Tony Stark. He takes on huge, exciting projects and somehow finds a way to make them work. He’s brilliant, he’s bold, and he’s also the richest man in the world with a net worth of a quarter of a trillion dollars. Although Musk seems to be very much into making things happen rather than explaining to other people how to make things happen, you can learn a lot about his mentality from these quotes.
20) "Optimism, pessimism, f*ck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work."
19) "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."
18) "If the rules are such that you can’t make progress, then you have to fight the rules."
17) "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."
16) "You wanna get up in the morning and be excited about the future. We should fight for the things that make us excited about the future. It cannot just be about solving one sad problem after another."
15) "I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary."
14) "Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better."
13) "Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time."
12) "Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up."
11) "The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur."
10) "Really pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends. ... Hardly anyone does that, and it's incredibly helpful."
9) "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?'"
8) "There's a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering."
7) "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."
6) "If you make no stuff, there is no stuff." – Elon Musk on shutting down the economy over COVID.
5) "Any product that needs a manual to work is broken."
4) "If a design is taking too long, the design is wrong."
3) "You should take the approach that you're wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong."
2) "Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."
1) "When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor."