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Book Quotes from Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
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Insight
Book Quote from Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
He’s been known to obsess over typos in e-mails to the point that he could not see past the errors and read the actual content of the messages. Even in social settings, Musk might get up from the dinner table without a word of explanation to head outside and look at the stars, simply because he’s not willing to suffer fools or small talk.
Insight
Book Quote from Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
As his ex-wife, Justine, put it, “He does what he wants, and he is relentless about it. It’s Elon’s world, and the rest of us live in it.
Insight
Book Quote from Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
What Musk has developed that so many of the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley lack is a meaningful worldview. He’s the possessed genius on the grandest quest anyone has ever concocted. He’s less a CEO chasing riches than a general marshaling troops to secure victory. Where Mark Zuckerberg wants to help you share baby photos, Musk wants to . . . well . . . save the human race from self-imposed or accidental annihilation.
Insight
Book Quote from Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
It bothers Musk a bit that his kids won’t suffer like he did. He feels that the suffering helped to make him who he is and gave him extra reserves of strength and will. “They might have a little adversity at school, but these days schools are so protective,” he said. “If you call someone a name, you get sent home. When I was going to school, if they punched you and there was no blood, it was like, ‘Whatever. Shake it off.’ Even if there was a little blood, but not a lot, it was fine. What do I do? Create artificial adversity? How do you do that? The biggest battle I have is restricting their video game time because they want to play all the time. The rule is they have to read more than they play video games. They also can’t play completely stupid video games. There’s one game they downloaded recently called Cookies or something. You literally tap a fucking cookie. It’s like a Psych 101 experiment. I made them delete the cookie game. They had to play Flappy Golf instead, which is like Flappy Bird, but at least there is some physics involved.
Insight
Book Quote from Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters
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Book Quote from Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
One thing that Musk holds in the highest regard is resolve, and he respects people who continue on after being told no.
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Book Quote from Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
He points out that one of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask,” Musk said. “Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask.” The teenage Musk then arrived at his ultralogical mission statement. “The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment.
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Book Quote from Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
There needs to be a reason for a grade. I’d rather play video games, write software, and read books than try and get an A if there’s no point in getting an A.
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Book Quote from Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
Good ideas are always crazy until they’re not.
Insight
Book Quote from Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.
