The craziest things eccentric billionaire Elon Musk has said

HE’S a genius billionaire with his fingers in online, space and electric cars. But he’s also said some pretty out-there stuff. Here are the best lines.

(FILES) In this October 9, 2014 file photo, Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk unveils the dual engine chasis of the new Tesla 'D' model which is a faster and all-wheel-drive version of the Model S electric sedan at the Hawthorne Airport in Los Angeles. High-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has reportedly added global Internet access from satellites to his vision of a future alongside sporty electric cars and private space exploration. The billionaire behind auto-maker Tesla and the SpaceX program is working on the project with satellite-industry veteran Greg Wyler, who spent some time devoted to a similar mission at Google, according to a report November 10, 2014 in the Wall Street Journal. Musk and Wyler are trying to devise a feasible and relatively low-cost way to put about 700 satellites, each weighing less than 250 pounds, into orbit to provide wireless Internet anywhere on the planet, the Journal reported. AFP PHOTO/Mark RALSTON/FILES

HE’S a proper genius. Like the Einstein kind.

Like Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison before him, 43-year-old Elon Musk has been hailed as the leading innovator of the current generation.

Currently the 52nd richest person in the world with a net worth of $US9.2 billion, according to Forbes, Musk has been a pioneer in the online, automotive and space industries.

Autocratic and blunt (but apparently still nicer than Steve Jobs was), Musk has used his background and smarts in economics and applied physics to position himself as the man to look to when people think of invention and innovation in 2014.

The South African-born entrepreneur migrated to Canada when he was 17-years-old, using his mother’s Canadian citizenship as a foothold into North America. After studying at the Queen’s University in Ontario and then the acclaimed Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Musk ditched an applied physics PHD program at Stanford to follow his start-up goals.

The Tesla Model S, Musk’s electric car.

Having taught himself computer coding as a 12-year-old, according to a profile in Businessweek, Musk started online directory company Zip 2 which he later sold to Compaq for $300 million. His next project, x.com, evolved into PayPal, which would be acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.

With the bounty from his online ventures, Musk has pursued his interest in clean energy and technology with Tesla Motors (so named for inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla), a company dedicated to electric cars. He also started SpaceX, a commercial aerospace company which is actually turning a profit.

Musk is also looking at building a hyperloop which will transport people from Los Angeles to San Francisco, a distance of 550 kilometres, in 30 minutes.

He’s certainly not short of ambition.

But the highly ambitious and intelligent are also prone to saying some pretty out-there stuff. Musk’s proclamations are a fascinating insight to the kind of person he is and the vision he has for humanity.

On human consciousness: “I came to the conclusion that we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. Really, the only thing that make sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.”

-Businessweek

Musk once did all sorts of odd-jobs in Canada just to get by, including cleaning boilers in a lumber mill.

On Earth: “F**k Earth! Who cares about Earth? If we can establish a Mars colony, we can almost certainly colonise the whole solar system, because we’ll have created a strong economic forcing function for the improvement of space travel. We’ll go to the moons of Jupiter, at least some of the outer ones for sure, and probably Titan on Saturn, and the asteroids. Once we have that forcing function, and an Earth-to-Mars economy, we’ll cover the whole solar system.”

-Eon magazine

On artificial intelligence and robots: “I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful. I’m increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish.”

-To students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

On chilling out: “The idea of lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. It sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I’d be super-duper bored. I like high intensity.”

Elon Musk is a big fan of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

-At the Computer History Museum

On experiments as a kid: “It’s remarkable how many things you can explode. I’m lucky I have all my fingers.”

-Businessweek

On flying cars: “I’ve thought about it quite a lot. We could definitely make a flying car — but that’s not the hard part. The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that’s super safe and quiet? Because if it’s a howler, you’re going to make people very unhappy.”

- The Independent

On moving to Mars: “I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact.”

-The Economist