Elon Musk

"It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will."

"Tesla is here to stay and keep fighting for the electric car revolution."

"When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world."

"Yeah, well I think anyone who likes fast cars will love the Tesla. And it has fantastic handling by the way. I mean this car will crush a Porsche on the track, just crush it. So if you like fast cars, you'll love this car. And then oh, by the way, it happens to be electric and it's twice the efficiency of a Prius."

"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."

"I've actually made a prediction that within 30 years a majority of new cars made in the United States will be electric. And I don't mean hybrid, I mean fully electric."

"If we're going to have any chance of sending stuff to other star systems, we need to be laser-focused on becoming a multi-planet civilisation."

"It is definitely true that the fundamental enabling technology for electric cars is lithium-ion as a cell chemistry technology. In the absence of that, I don't think it's possible to make an electric car that is competitive with a gasoline car."

"My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars - this is very important - so you don't have to carry the return fuel when you go there."

"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'm interested in things that change the world or that affect the future and wondrous, new technology where you see it, and you're like, 'Wow, how did that even happen? How is that possible?'"

"Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster."

"Any product that needs a manual to work is broken."

"Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good."

"I'm glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That's cool."

"My opinion is it's a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars."

"When I was a child, there's one thing I said: 'I never want to be alone.' That's what I would say. I don't want to be alone."

"You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place."

"As you heat the planet up, it's just like boiling a pot."

"Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That's pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement."

"I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don't believe in the whole thing of just using other people's money. I don't think that's right. I'm not going to ask other people to invest in something if I'm not prepared to do so myself."

"I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I'm really good at email."

"I like the word 'autopilot' more than I like the word 'self-driving.' 'Self-driving' sounds like it's going to do something you don't want it to do. 'Autopilot' is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars."

"I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people."

"I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better. I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself."

"I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself."

"I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It's the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company."

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

"I will never be happy without having someone. Going to sleep alone kills me."

"I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact."

"I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I've got kids and responsibilities, so I can't be my own test pilot. That wouldn't be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as it's a sensible thing to do."

"I'd like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that's not just e-mail with a view."

"I'm anti-tax, but I'm pro-carbon tax."

"If I'm not in love, if I'm not with a long-term companion, I cannot be happy."

"If something's important enough, you should try. Even if - the probable outcome is failure."

"If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it's not."

"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."

"In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution."

"It is theoretically possible to warp spacetime itself, so you're not actually moving faster than the speed of light, but it's actually space that's moving."

"Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket - half a million dollars. It can be done."

"Life is too short for long-term grudges."

"Mars is the only place in the solar system where it's possible for life to become multi-planetarian."

"On one of the SpaceX flights, we had a secret payload: a wheel of cheese. We flew to orbit and brought it back, so it was the world's first 'space cheese.' It was, in part, a tribute to Monty Python."

"Patience is a virtue, and I'm learning patience. It's a tough lesson."

"People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working."

"Rockets are cool. There's no getting around that."

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