"America is the spirit of human exploration distilled."

"The idea of Tesla is to accelerate sustainable energy, to really make a difference."

"I've actually made a prediction that within 30 years a majority of new cars made in the United States will be electric. And I don't mean hybrid, I mean fully electric."

"I would like to be remembered as someone who tried to do things that matter."

"You want to be extra careful when making big decisions, but once you make a decision, stick with it."

"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."

"Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do."

"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."

"The best way to predict the future is to create it."

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

"The U.S. automotive industry has been selling cars the same way for over 100 years, and there are many laws in place to govern exactly how that is to be accomplished."

"Yeah, well I think anyone who likes fast cars will love the Tesla. And it has fantastic handling by the way. I mean this car will crush a Porsche on the track, just crush it. So if you like fast cars, you'll love this car. And then oh, by the way, it happens to be electric and it's twice the efficiency of a Prius."

"Some companies out there quote a start of production that is substantially in advance of when customers get their cars."

"If you look at space companies, they've failed either because they've had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think."

"The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far - the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We're obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not."

"The key to making things happen is focus."

"If anyone thinks they'd rather be in a different part of history, they're probably not a very good student of history. Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You'd probably have no teeth by now. It would be particularly awful if you were a woman."

"If you think back to the beginning of cell phones, laptops or really any new technology, it's always expensive."

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

"I think it matters whether someone has a good heart."

"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 would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will."

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

"We're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work."

"There's a silly notion that failure's not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people."

"I'm convinced that the people who do the most to make the world a better place are those who are passionate about solving a big problem."

"My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars - this is very important - so you don't have to carry the return fuel when you go there."

"It is possible for a small group of people to change the world."

"The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn't even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we'd never have had the light bulb."

"SpaceX has the potential of saving the U.S. government $1 billion a year. We are opposed to creating an entrenched monopoly with no realistic means for anyone to compete."

"I'm anti-tax, but I'm pro-carbon tax."

"Mars is the only place in the solar system where it's possible for life to become multi-planetarian."

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

"You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place."

"Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss."

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

"There's a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their success rate, but you have to take risks."

"Selling an electric sports car creates an opportunity to fundamentally change the way America drives."

"We need to do things that are important and useful, as opposed to things that are easy and meaningless."

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

"In terms of the Internet, it's like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a [?], like a collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system. It's a hugely impactful thing."

"The greatest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that's changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks."

"The reason we're building SpaceX is to be able to make life multi-planetary."

"The reality is that very few people end up doing something that changes the world."

"Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good."

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