What Elon SaidAn archive of questions answered

Subjects / Books

Books

17 answers

Opinion

Why go to Mars / become multiplanetary?

“Asimov’s Foundation series was a major influence on me. That and the fall of Rome, from which Foundation takes inspiration, is what convinced me that we need to extend consciousness beyond Earth to avoid a potentially infinite dark age.”

— Elon Musk, 25 July 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

What do you think of George Orwell?

“Orwell was incredible. However, as an idealistic young man, even he was initially captured by communism. Until he saw it firsthand in the Spanish civil war, he didn’t realize he was fighting for the bad guys.”

— Elon Musk, 5 June 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

If everyone has a billion dollars, doesn't nobody?

“Actually, AI/Robotics will mean everyone can have a penthouse if they want. The output of goods & services will be several orders of magnitude higher than today’s economy. Read the Iain Banks Culture books for the best imagining of how it will be. That said, what is the future you want? Amazing abundance seems the best to me.”

— Elon Musk, 18 April 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Fact

Will you write a book?

“I am primarily trying to advance two causes: sustainable energy & extending life/consciousness beyond Earth. There is also the existential threat of AI, which we should aspire to mitigate. This doesn’t leave time to write books.”

— Elon Musk, 10 January 2021 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Fact

What’s your philosophy?

“Should prob articulate philosophy underlying my actions. It’s pretty simple & mostly influenced by Douglas Adams & Isaac Asimov. Foundation Series & Zeroth Law are fundamental to creation of SpaceX I love Banks. Best books in recent years imo are Iain Banks & George Martin. The future is a set of branching probability streams. Some actions by humanity have an extremely leveraged effect on shape & size of those streams.”

— Elon Musk, 15 June 2018 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Fact

What books shaped you?

“Everyone has their sort of favorite philosopher, but my favorite philosopher is Douglas Adams. …it highlighted an important point, which is that a lot of times the question is harder than the answer. And if you can properly phrase the question, then the answer is the easy part. The universe is the answer; what are the questions? Asimov certainly was influential because he was seriously paralleling Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but he applied that to a sort of modern galactic empire… The lesson I drew from that is you should try to take the set of actions that are likely to prolong civilization, minimize the probability of a dark age and reduce the length of a dark age if there is one. Our AI Grok is modeled after the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is one of my favorite books. Which is it’s a book on philosophy disguised as a book on humor.”

— Elon Musk, November 2017 · Watch: Elon Musk at CHM Revolutionaries ↗ · In the archive