I feel that the best companies are started not because the founder wanted a company but because the founder wanted to change the world… If you decide you want to found a company, you maybe start to develop your first idea. And hire lots of workers.

I’ve never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there’s nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there. It’s coming up out of my unconscious, up from places that I don’t even know where they are.

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

I believe the returns on investment in the poor are just as exciting as successes achieved in the business arena, and they are even more meaningful!

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.

If you look at any Muslim society and you make a scale of how developed they are, and how successful the economy is, it’s a straight line. It depends on how much they emancipate their women.

I respect Drake not only as a creative person but as a business mind as well. I think Drake’s important.

To me, business isn’t about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials.

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

Energy innovation is not a nationalistic game.

In order for us to have a future that’s exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we’re a space-bearing civilization.

If there’s one thing that’s certain in business, it’s uncertainty.

You could imagine a language exactly like English except it doesn’t have connectives like ‚and‘ that allow you to make longer expressions. An infant learning truncated English would have no idea about this: They would just pick it up as they would standard English.

Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone.

Civilization is the making of civil persons.

We think that life develops spontaneously on Earth, so it must be possible for life to develop on suitable planets elsewhere in the universe. But we don’t know the probability that a planet develops life.

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.

It feels good being a restaurant owner because it’s part of my dreams of being the biggest mogul.

Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past?

The thing that’s been really surprising about the evolution of Facebook is – I think then, and I think now – that if we didn’t do this, someone else would have done it.

There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.

I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.

Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed.

Politics is just a function of business now, just a tributary of the great entrepreneurial capitalist system.

To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

You can’t really imagine music without technology.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents‘ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees.

HartBeat Productions is a company established by me; it’s mine. I run it. I have employees.

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

Competitions are a business, first and foremost.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

California has a special relationship with the Internet. Many of the core technologies that power the Internet were invented here. Many of the most successful online entrepreneurs and content creators – in business, the arts, and countless other endeavors – got their start here.

A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

When schools flourish, all flourishes.

The Web and new technology offer more opportunities to reach a world market at a lower price. Today, a person can start a business at home and reach the world market.

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

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.

The engineering is long gone in most PC companies. In the consumer electronics companies, they don’t understand the software parts of it. And so you really can’t make the products that you can make at Apple anywhere else right now. Apple’s the only company that has everything under one roof.

I think I had a mild case of Asperger’s as a younger guy, but that typically just wears off after a while.

Tesla is becoming a real car company.

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

In this business you have to develop a thick skin, but I’m always going to feel everything. It’s my nature.

I think Tesla will most likely develop its own autopilot system for the car, as I think it should be camera-based, not Lidar-based. However, it is also possible that we do something jointly with Google.

If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language.

All experience is an arch, to build upon.

This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.

If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress.

I just figured out that if I gave my all into this game – if I put everything into the fight business – then I would eventually run the fight business.

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.

I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.

Eventually, all companies are replaced.

If you are a small company taking on a big company, you need to have a sense of humor.

The rich don’t work for money – the rich invent money.

In the material sciences these are and have been, and are most surely likely to continue to be heroic days.

I do think there is a lot of potential if you have a compelling product and people are willing to pay a premium for that. I think that is what Apple has shown. You can buy a much cheaper cell phone or laptop, but Apple’s product is so much better than the alternative, and people are willing to pay that premium.

The common question that gets asked in business is, ‚why?‘ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‚why not?‘