Entrepreneurs are natural problem-solvers, which means that we always have ideas for new businesses popping into our heads. Having a lot of options is great, but sometimes it can be hard to focus on one when you are keen to move onto the next.

So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires great strength to decide on what to do.

I have often been asked what I think about at the moment of take-off. Of course, no pilot sits and feels his pulse as he flies. He has to be part of the machine. If he thinks of anything but the task in hand, then trouble is probably just around the corner.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.

There were people who incorporated melody before me, but I would deem myself the first person to successfully rap and sing.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.

Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee… I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.

You need to think outside the box. You need to think differently if you want to sustain what, for me, is my peak performance: the very best that I can achieve as an athlete every day.

Whatever has happened in my quest for innovation has been part of my quest for immaculate reality.

You can tell the tree by the fruit it bears. You see it through what the organization is delivering as far as a concrete program. If the tree’s fruit sours or grows brackish, then the time has come to chop it down – bury it and walk over it and plant new seeds.

The microprocessor is a miracle.

I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.

I’m a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

The die is cast.

Warren Buffet told me once and he said always follow your gut. When you have that gut feeling, you have to go with don’t go back on it.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

I don’t think you ever really know what all you’re doing, so you have to act on faith.

I don’t really focus on these things – on what tags are given to me or what people think of me off the field – stuff like that. My main focus is always to do well on the field for the Indian cricket team. When people say good things about me off the field, I am more than happy to accept them.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

I’m trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.

Art is to be free. Design is to fix.

We wind a simple ring of iron with coils; we establish the connections to the generator, and with wonder and delight we note the effects of strange forces which we bring into play, which allow us to transform, to transmit and direct energy at will.

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.

No. I mean those people really did something for designers I don’t think department stores can, could or should do still today. Today the world is different so you have to make it differently. There’s TV. There’s a lot of things.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.

It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry ‚I could have thought of that‘ is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn’t, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.

When I get on a roll with something, it’s really hard for me to put it down unfinished.

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.

The government’s job is good governance for everybody. My government will make policies; if you fit into it, come on board, or stay where you are. My job is not to spoon-feed anyone.

My parents pretty much realized that I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really.

Sin, also for those who don’t have faith, exists when one goes against one’s conscience. To listen to and obey it means, in fact, to decide in face of what is perceived as good or evil. And on this decision pivots the goodness or malice of our action.

If every choice you make comes from an honest place, you’re solid, and nothing anybody can say about you can rock you or change your opinion.

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

I have a particular relationship with Vinod Khosla because he’s got a lot of very interesting science-based energy startups.

Whenever I go on a ride, I’m always thinking of what’s wrong with the thing and how it can be improved.

People expect your behavior to conform to known patterns and conventions. Your task as a strategist is to upset their expectations.

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we’ve ever known.

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

I love Los Angeles, and it’s been very good to me, but if everyone is running around telling the stories, who’s living them? You don’t play characters that are celebrities – you play guys who know what to do when their septic tank’s blocked.

People are getting smarter nowadays; they are letting lawyers, instead of their conscience, be their guide.

One of my direct subordinates, one of my guys that worked for me, he would call me up or pull me aside with some major problem, some issue that was going on. And he’d say, ‚Boss, we’ve got this, and that, and the other thing.‘ And I’d look at him and I’d say, ‚Good.‘