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It’s very important to like the people you work with, otherwise life [and] your job is gonna be quite miserable.

When somebody has a breakthrough innovation, it is rarely one little thing. Very rarely, is it one little thing. It’s usually a whole bunch of things that collectively amount to a huge innovation.

Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.

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

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.

I always have optimism, but I’m realistic. It was not with the expectation of great success that I started Tesla or SpaceX… It’s just that I thought they were important enough to do anyway.

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.

You have to say, ‘Well, why did it succeed where others did not?

Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive, and determination of the people behind it as the product they sell.

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