Elon Musk Quotes

In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend.

We seem to have trouble with [critical thinking]. And our political system doesn't help.

Thinking is one of the most important weapons in dealing with problems

Don’t just follow the trend. You may have heard me say that it’s good to think in terms of the physics approach of first principles. Which is, rather than reasoning by analogy, you boil things down to the most fundamental truths you can imagine and you reason up from there.

Thinking. A process by which I use my brain to make a rational decision.

My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another.

Stupidity is no excuse of not thinking.

As an educator, I try to get people to be fundamentally curious and to question ideas that they might have or that are shared by others. In that state of mind, they have earned a kind of inoculation against the fuzzy thinking of these weird ideas floating around out there. So rather than correct the weird ideas, I would rather them to know how to think in the first place. Then they can correct the weird idea themselves.

… the third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.

The shortest and surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught, to mount the first principles, and take nobody's word about them.

Thinking - in particular abstract thinking, which most of us are introduced to through the study of mathematics and literature - helps us learn that we can become problem solvers.

To solve a problem it is necessary to think. It is necessary to think even to decide what facts to collect.

Mathematics seems to endow one with something like a new sense.

Logic can become enormously difficult, and it would undoubtedly be well to produce more assurance in its use.

Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.

I need something, Wax. A place to look. You always did the thinking.” “Yes, having a brain helps with that, surprisingly.

I'm always like that about everything. When I try to do something, I always think, "What is the best way to do this?" Instead of taking what everyone else says and how it has been forever, it's faster for me to try myself. Of course I listen to what everybody says, and at first I'll try what people say, but I always come back to trying it my way.

Why, then, do you think the white player might have done it?" Reynie considered. He imagined himself moving out his knight only to bring it right back to where it started. Why would he ever do such a thing? At last he said,"Perhaps because he doubted himself.

I don't guess. I think. I ponder. I deduce. Then I decide. But I never guess.

Physics is a good framework for thinking. ... Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.

It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.

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.

We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions, and that is something altogether different.