I can no longer type, so I use TalkingPoint and Dragon Dictate. It’s a speech-to-text program, and there’s an add-on for talking which some guys came up with.

I have no private interest in the reception of my inventions by the world, having never made, nor proposed to make, the least profit by any of them.

America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

You’ve gotta understand that with branding and the way things are promoted, in our day and age, your older movie stars are not reachable or accessible because they’re not a part of the whole social media world.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.

In business or in life, don’t follow the wagon tracks too closely.

For instance, I’m always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

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.

I am in touch with a company that hopes to replicate my voice. However, they are not replicating my original voice – if they did that, I would sound like a man in his 20s, which would be very strange! They are actually trying to replicate the synthesizer that sits on my wheelchair.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.

I’ve discovered this new electronic technique that creates new speech out of stuff that’s already there.

Think off-center.

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

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

We, we – as I say, we go in and shake up other industries and I think, you know, we do it differently and I think that industries are not quite the same as a result of Virgin attacking the market.

Art is to be free. Design is to fix.

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.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

I have already demonstrated, by crucial tests, the practicability of signaling by my system from one to any other point of the globe, no matter how remote, and I shall soon convert the disbelievers.

Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they’re intended to be used for.

I don’t invest in ideas because ideas are a dime a dozen. I could steal the idea pretty quickly.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Our goal is to make the best devices in the world, not to be the biggest.

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

Necessity… the mother of invention.

There’s no point in starting a business unless you’re going to make a dramatic difference to other people’s lives. So if you’ve got an idea that’s gonna make a big difference to other people’s lives, then just get on and do it.

I think there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It’s really a different product category.

California is not just the Golden State. We are also the Internet State.

The solar system can support a trillion humans. And then we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.

It’s not going to do any good to land on Mars if we’re stupid.

The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

I’m always interested in what you can do with technology that people haven’t thought of doing yet.

Every citizen has the real right to receive general education and professional training at no cost, something that the United States has not been able to ensure for all its inhabitants.

Everybody thinks that when new technologies come along that they’re transparent and you can just do your job well on it. But technologies always import a whole new set of values with them.

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

I never thought, in my lifetime, that you’d be able to watch movies, read books and listen to music from a phone, but I guess the technology of tomorrow is here today.

All my records and videos were groundbreaking.

It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we’d given customers what they said they wanted, we’d have built a computer they’d have been happy with a year after we spoke to them – not something they’d want now.

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.

The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life.

Fashion has become so whatever. I don’t think there are any stones left to unturn.

When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.

We know that the nation that goes all-in on innovation today will own the global economy tomorrow. This is an edge America cannot surrender.

Publishing is in a kind of Jurassic age.

America’s experience, like many others, teaches us that fostering entrepreneurship is not just about crafting the right economic policy or developing the best educated curricula. It’s about creating an entire climate in which innovation and ideas flourish.

Tesla is here to stay and keep fighting for the electric car revolution.

There is a difference between what technology enables and what historical business practices enable.

The potential financial reward for building the ‚next Windows‘ is so great that there will never be a shortage of new technologies seeking to challenge it.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It’ll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn’t been reusable.

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

The goal of Tesla is to accelerate sustainable energy, so we’re going to take a step back and think about what’s most likely to achieve that goal.

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.

If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.