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There's a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.

Elon Musk

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Elon Musk
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: June 28
Actor
Aerospace Engineer
Engineer
Entrepreneur
Inventor
Investor
Programmer
Pretoria
South Africa
Elon Reeve Musk
Elon R. Musk
Elon R Musk
Risk
Everyone
Optimize
Trying
Bias
Covering
Risks
Ass
Tremendous
Taking

More quotes by Elon Musk

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The idea of lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. It sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I'd be super-duper bored. I like high intensity.
Elon Musk
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There are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions.
Elon Musk
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Nobody wants to buy a $60,000 electric Civic. But people will pay $90,000 for an electric sports car.
Elon Musk
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There's a fundamental difference, if you sort of look into the future, between a humanity that is a space-faring civilization, that's out there exploring the stars...compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event.
Elon Musk
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It's just mind-blowingly awesome. I apologize, and I wish I was more articulate, but it's hard to be articulate when your mind's blown-but in a very good way.
Elon Musk
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What most people know but don't realize they know is that the world is almost entirely solar-powered already. If the sun wasn't there, we'd be a frozen ice ball at three degrees Kelvin, and the sun powers the entire system of precipitation. The whole ecosystem is solar-powered.
Elon Musk
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In the case of Apple, they did originally do production internally, but then along came unbelievably good outsourced manufacturing from companies like Foxconn. We don't have that in the rocket business. There's no Foxconn in the rocket business.
Elon Musk
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Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.
Elon Musk
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Don't be afraid of new arenas.
Elon Musk
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It's important that we attempt to extend life beyond Earth now. It is the first time in the four billion-year history of Earth that it's been possible, and that window could be open for a long time - hopefully it is - or it could be open for a short time. We should err on the side of caution and do something now.
Elon Musk
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I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I'm really good at email.
Elon Musk
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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.
Elon Musk
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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.
Elon Musk
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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.
Elon Musk
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It was obvious to me that we could never colonize Mars without reusability, any more than America would have been colonized if they had to burn the ships after every trip.
Elon Musk
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Many things are improbable, only a few are impossible.
Elon Musk
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Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of what you're doing is as valuable as gold
Elon Musk
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Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.
Elon Musk
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The thing that's worth doing is trying to improve our understanding of the world and gain a better appreciation of the universe and not to worry too much about there being no meaning. And, you know, try and enjoy yourself. Because, actually, life's pretty good. It really is.
Elon Musk
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Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.
Elon Musk