Imagine a friend of yours just woke up from a 15-year coma. They ask you to catch them up on politics, and once you get past the most obvious thing — “Wait, who is the president?” — you come to the task of explaining that most enigmatic of questions: “Who is Elon Musk? Wait, that Tesla guy, from the Iron Man movie?”
Where — oh, where — to begin?
Musk is a bundle of contradictions: awkward and accomplished, thoughtless and thoughtful, compelling and compounding. But there’s at least one tool that pulls him into focus: His own words.
Senior Writer Michael Kruse has compiled the 199 most Elon Musk things that Elon Musk has ever said. Taken together, they form a sort of profile of the world’s richest man — from his obsession with Hitchhiker’s Guide to his MAGA-right rebrand. Here’s the first one: “One day when I was young, my parents warned me against playing with fire,” Musk once said. “So I took a box of matches behind a tree and started lighting them.”
Read more 199 quotes: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-weekend/2025/01/24/199-quotes-that-reveal-the-real-elon-musk-00200446
