Quotes from Elon Musk | Walter Isaacson

A few quotes from the book “Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson:

• Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough.
• Simplify and optimize. … A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist.
• Step one should be to question the requirements,” he says. “Make them less wrong and dumb, because all requirements are somewhat wrong and dumb. And then delete, delete, delete.
• We’re going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work.
• The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.
• “maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle”
• “He went to the Palo Alto public library to read about rocket engineering and started calling experts, asking to borrow their old engine manuals. At a gathering of PayPal alumni in Las Vegas, he sat in a cabana by the pool reading a tattered manual for a Russian rocket engine. When one of the alums, Mark Woolway, asked him what he planned to do next, Musk answered, “I**’m going to colonize Mars. My mission in life is to make mankind a multiplanetary civilization.**” Woolway’s reaction was unsurprising. “Dude, you’re bananas.”
• I thought about the things that will truly affect humanity,” he says. “I came up with three: the internet, sustainable energy, and space travel.
• This is how civilizations decline. They quit taking risks.
• When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant.
• “If conventional thinking makes your mission impossible,” Musk told him, “then unconventional thinking is necessary.”
• While other entrepreneurs struggled to develop a worldview, he developed a cosmic view.
• “Precision is not expensive,” he says. “It’s mostly about caring. Do you care to make it precise? Then you can make it precise.”
• It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong.
• Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do.