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 wrote a song with Ed Sheeran that was kind of spontaneous.

Netscape was able to get the government working on its behalf.

In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

SpaceX is only 12 years old now. Between now and 2040, the company’s lifespan will have tripled. If we have linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people.

I have surrounded myself with very smart people.

Right now it’s only a notion, but I think I can get the money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea.

Although designers continue to dream of ‚transparency‘ – technologies that just do their job without making their presence felt – both creators and audiences actually like technologies with ‚personality.‘

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.

I didn’t used to wear a watch. Now I have a SPOT watch, which I wear all the time.

Every aspect of human technology has a dark side, including the bow and arrow.

The slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage.

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

I’m not a man deeply interested in technology. It eludes me.

Science is a tool, and we invent tools to do things we want. It’s a question of how those tools are used by people.

Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you’re glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.

I’ve thought sometimes about what I like about football, and it’s playing together.

I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of leadership are universal and are often about finding ways of encouraging people to combine their efforts, their talents, their insights, their enthusiasm and their inspiration to work together.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

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

SPAM is taking e-mail, which is a wonderful tool, and exploiting the idea that it’s very inexpensive to send mail.

I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.

If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you’re good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

If you want to make computers that really work, create a design team composed only of healthy, active women with lots else to do in their lives, and give them carte blanche.

Whenever you have multiple devices including multiple PCs that you want to share information with, it’s always been a bit complicated.

There are a few other things that I built when I was at Harvard that were kind of smaller versions of Facebook. One such program was this program called Match. People could enter the different courses that they were taking, and see what other courses would be correlated with the courses they are taking.

China has to go along with world trends. That’s democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.

Teamwork is so important that it is virtually impossible for you to reach the heights of your capabilities or make the money that you want without becoming very good at it.

Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.

With impressive proof on all sides of magnificent progress, no one can rightly deny the fundamental correctness of our economic system.

Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.

The reason that Apple is able to create products like the iPad is because we’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts.

I think a lot of the time there isn’t such a black-and-white difference between what’s a platform and what’s an app. It’s really just like the most important apps become platforms.

Here in America, we don’t let our differences tear us apart. Not here. Because we know that our greatness comes from when we appreciate each other’s strengths, when we learn from each other, when we lean on each other, because in this country, it’s never been each person for themselves. No, we’re all in this together. We always have been.

We live in a day that nobody’s lived in before: where you can touch more people. The message I’ll speak tonight and the message that I speak at home, people in India will hear. It’s just an amazing day.

One thing I’ve tried to never do is make wish lists. I try to have a very steppingstone mentality about this whole thing, where as soon as you make one step you visualize the next step, not five steps ahead.

It’s time for the human race to enter the solar system.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

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

We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain.

The technology keeps moving forward, which makes it easier for the artists to tell their stories and paint the pictures they want.

Health is certainly extremely important, and we’ve done a number of things at Facebook to help improve global health and work in that area, and I am excited to do more there, too. But the reality is that it’s not an either-or. People need to be healthy and be able to have the Internet as a backbone to connect them to the whole economy.

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

You can’t say civilization don’t advance… in every war they kill you in a new way.

Facebook is quite entrenched and has a network effect. It’s hard to break into a network once it’s formed.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.

All experience is an arch, to build upon.

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.

We can succeed only by concert. It is not, ‚Can any of us imagine better,‘ but, ‚Can we all do better?‘

I don’t think people are going to talk in the future. They’re going to communicate through eye contact, body language, emojis, signs.

There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.

I sincerely hope I can contribute to the progress there has been in relations between Jews and Catholics since the Second Vatican Council in a spirit of renewed collaboration.

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