I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.

If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.

Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.

We want to do a lot of stuff; we’re not in great shape. We didn’t get a good night’s sleep. We’re a little depressed. Coffee solves all these problems in one delightful little cup.

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

If you try and work out at 4:30 in the afternoon, how many people are going to chip away at that time? Your boss, your job, your work, your family, your other obligations that you might have. At 4:30 in the morning, all those people are asleep, so you can do whatever you want.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

I have so many designs and video ideas and lyrics in my head, so I always try to be productive.

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration.

I’m a writer, not a professional runner. It’s fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.

I don’t have time to stand around and listen to an 11-minute song.

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?

I didn’t work hard to sit down and not work.

I have wasted my hours.

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 way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

Necessity… the mother of invention.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o’clock is a scoundrel.

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

Engineering training deals with the exact sciences. That sort of exactness makes for truth and conscience. It might be good for the world if more men had that sort of mental start in life even if they did not pursue the profession.

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.

A lot of people are focused on taking over the world or doing the biggest thing and getting the most users. I think part of making a difference and doing something cool is focusing intensely.

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

Well, I’m working all the time to stay out of trouble!

If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done.

Don’t think in the morning. That’s a big mistake that people make. They wake up in the morning and they start thinking. Don’t think. Just execute the plan. The plan is the alarm clock goes off, you get up, you go work out. Get some.

I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer.

The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

Personally, I’d like to see more of our leaders take a technocratic approach to solving our biggest problems.

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

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Working with a lot of people at the same time is a task. I really like making stuff and getting stuff done. One of the things I really liked about Facebook was that I could always move so quickly. I wrote the original application in, like, nine days at the end of January.

I’ve seen how the issues that come across a president’s desk are always the hard ones – the problems where no amount of data or numbers will get you to the right answer.

The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

I tweet in the morning and the evening. To write 12 hours a day, there is a moment when you’re really tired. It’s my relaxing time.

The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.

90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world.

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.

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

Progressively saved by the machine from the anxieties that bound his hands and mind to material toil, relieved of a large part of his work and compelled to an ever-increasing speed of action by the devices which his intelligence cannot help ceaselessly creating and perfecting, man is about to find himself abruptly plunged into idleness.

By the time you get dressed, drive out there, play 18 holes and come home, you’ve blown seven hours. There are better things you can do with your time.

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.‘

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.

I like to work and am a focused person.

About half my time is spent on business operation type stuff.

I believe you never get tired by doing work. You get tired when you don’t work. When you clean your house, you don’t get tired; it gives you satisfaction.

Such a chimerical idea as telegraphing vocal sounds would indeed, to most minds, seem scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over. I believe, however, that it is feasible and that I have got the cue to the solution of the problem.

A little over 5% of the world’s population produces almost 29% of the world’s goods and services.