Elon Musk Quotes

My characteristics as a scientist stem from a non-conformist upbringing, a sense of being something of an outsider, and looking for different perceptions in everything from novels, to art to experimental results. I like complexity and am delighted by the unexpected. Ideas interest me.

I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.

The finest minds seem to be formed rather by efforts at original thinking, by endeavors to form new combinations, and to discover new truths, than by passively receiving the impressions of other men's ideas.

We don't like trends. We formed initially because we felt we had something of our own to say. What was happening was lacking in certain aspects - it needed a different point of view, a variant on things, but with the same attack, impact.

You have to think outside the box.

The best way to get people to think outside the box is not to create the box in the first place.

When we can't think for ourselves, we can always quote

He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

Without theory we can only copy.

I like the fact that I like to think out-of-the-box. Thinking out-of-the-box goes along with dressing out-of-the-box and living out-of-the-box. If you want to come up with a really original design idea and you want to capture a whole new design direction, perhaps the best way to arrive at that is not by acting and thinking and doing like everybody else. That's all.

The secret of innovation is to see what all see but think what none think

Lateral thinking... is the process of using information to bring about creativity and insight restructuring. Lateral thinking can be learned, practised and used. It is possible to acquire skill in it just as it is possible to acquire skill in mathematics.

You may derive thoughts from others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own.

I have created a life by stepping out of the box of people's limitations. I call it zigging when others are zagging.

To supply a thought is mental massage; but to evolve a thought of your own is an achievement. Thinking is a brain exercise and no faculty grows save as it is exercised.

A detective with his murder mystery, a chemist seeking the structure of a new compound, use little of the formal and logical modes of reasoning. Through a series of intuitions, surmises, fancies, they stumble upon the right explanation, and have a knack of seizing it when it once comes within reach.

Thinking about how disturbingly herdlike people become in so many different contexts - mimetic theory forces you to think about that, which is knowledge that's generally suppressed and hidden. As an investor-entrepreneur, I've always tried to be contrarian, to go against the crowd, to identify opportunities in places where people are not looking.

I always thought problem solving was greatly overrated - and that the most important thing was problem creation.

I think it is undeniably true that the human brain must work in models. The trick is to have your brain work better than the other person's brain because it understands the most fundamental models- ones that will do most work per unit.

I think the enemy of creativity in the world today is that so much thinking is done for you.

Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn't.

To use your head, you have to go out of your mind.

The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.

Any idea can be a great idea if you think differently, dream big and commit to seeing it realized

Complacency with our traditional judgement based thinking methods is not enough. Our existing thinking habits are excellent just as the rear wheel of a motor car is excellent but not enough. We need to put far more emphasis on creative and design thinking. Judgement and analysis are not enough.