Elon Musk Quotes

Poker is all about comfort with uncertainty, after all.

You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run.

Imprudence relies on luck, prudence on method. That gives prudence less edge than it expects.

Blackjack is very scientific. There's always a right answer and a wrong answer. Do you take a card, increase your bet, bet big or bet small. There's absolutely a right and wrong answer.

I like to play cards. I'm not very good, because I don't want to calculate, I just play by instinct. But I've learned a lot of business philosophy by playing poker.

Whenever you're at a poker table - and you're betting all of your chips - you're worried, you're scared. Is it the right play? Have I thought through all the angles? That's what stinks about life and business in general. If I had to calculate 100% certainty on every deal I did, I literally would do zero deals.

Before you invest, you must ensure that you have realistically assessed your probability of being right and how you will react to the consequences of being wrong.

It's got to be the best intellectual exercise out there. You're seeing through new situations every ten minutes. In the stock market you don't base your decisions on what the market is doing, but on what you think is rational. Bridge is about weighing gain/loss ratios. You're doing calculations all the time.

Golf is a percentage game, and I play the percentages.

At gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.

I won’t bet $100 against house odds between now and the grave.

Heads I win, tails I don’t lose much.

The entrepreneurial mind-set is that risk is the heightened probability that there is a big range of possible outcomes.

If you're too methodical, too fearful, you're not going to win. But the clever thing is to make the calculation correctly about where and when to go over the top. You've got to know when to push it and when to come back.

If I go gambling the slots, some of my friends will come with me and play along with me. It's not like I'm starting out with $500 a pull or $1,000 a pull. I go in there and play $25, and if I win, I play $100s.

Time and again, players lose because they make rash decisions. Therefore, you always have to remind yourself - don't hurry. Embarking on a risky combination that cannot be calculated to the end is certainly not the right thing to do.

It is much better to tempt fortune where it can favor you than to see your certain ruin by not tempting it.

Nobody can really guarantee the future. The best we can do is size up the chances, calculate the risks involved, estimate our ability to deal with them and then make our plans with confidence.

I know I made plenty of mistakes in my tenure. But one of the things that you learn is to be very careful and to protect yourself down the road a little bit, which is to say you've got to think ahead and think where is the story going to go? What are all the possible outcomes? And how do I protect the president from unexpected twists and turns in the road?

Do your worrying before you place your bet, not after the wheel stops turning.

We cannot create blueprint for future society, but it is good to think about that. It is good to have in mind a goal. It is constructive, it is helpful, it is healthy, to think about what future society might be like, because then it guides you somewhat what you are doing today, but only so long as this discussions about future society don't become obstacles to working towards this future society. Otherwise you can spend discussing this utopian possibility versus that utopian possibility, and in the mean time you are not acting in a way that would bring you closer to that.

Play the shot you've got the best chance of playing well.

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, the others, goats. You pick a door, say #1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say #3, which has a goat. He says to you: 'Do you want to pick door #2?' Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?

I think all presidents should take the long view of history.

That's right, kid. Never play an ace if a two will do.