Elon Musk on Wealth Quotes

"Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. This improves the odds of success."

"I don't create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done."

"I would rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right."

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

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

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

"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."

"Capital is just a way of moving resources around. If you're on a desert island, a billion dollars is worth nothing."

"If you are trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion."

"If you make a product that people love, the money will follow."

"If you're co-founder or CEO, you have to do all the tasks you might not want to do... If you don't do your chores, the company won't succeed."

"I'm not a businessman. I'm an engineer who happens to be a businessman."

"I'm not interested in money. I'm interested in the future."

"I'm selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house."

"I'm willing to lose everything if it means we get to Mars."

"I don't really care about wealth. I care about the future of humanity."

"I think it's important to be able to fail. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."

"You have to be very rigorous about self-analysis. You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible product."

"I think the best way to attract capital is to show that you don't need it."

"I don't like to talk about my wealth. I like to talk about my work."

"I don't have a lot of expensive hobbies. I don't really go on vacations."

"Money is a low-bandwidth way of communicating between people."

"Money is just a tool. It's not the end goal."

"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."

"Possessions just weigh you down. And they're kind of an attack vector. People say, 'Hey, billionaire, you got all this stuff.' Well, now I don't have the stuff—now what are you going to do?"

"Profit is not the goal, it's the result of doing things right."

"The most important thing is to make sure that the company is moving in the right direction."

"The point of a company is to organize people to create a product or service. It's not a thing in itself."

"The reason I am selling my possessions is to fund a city on Mars."

"The value of a company is the sum of its future cash flows discounted to the present."

"Wealth is just a database entry for the allocation of resources."

"I don't think it's a good idea to have a lot of money sitting in a bank account. It should be deployed into things that are productive."

"I don't think people should be rewarded for doing things that are bad for the world."