Elon Musk is the guy who co-founded PayPal, leads both SpaceX and Tesla, and he's recently released plans for a fast-and-cheap transportation system called Hyperloop..

He basically specializes in creating things that look like something out of a sci-fi movie. Musk has been described by a past co-worker as "an exceptional freak of nature," but he's dropped some gems of wisdom from his incredible mind over the years.

Here are some of the best ones:

1. On ideas: “[Physics is] a good framework for thinking. … Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.”

2. On ambition: “The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.”

3. On motive: "Going from PayPal, I thought: 'Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?' Not from the perspective, 'What's the best way to make money?'"

4. On perseverance: “If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.”

5. On the future: “There's a fundamental difference, if you look into the future, between a humanity that is a space-faring civilization, that's out there exploring the stars … compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event.”

6. On progress: “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 makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.”

7. On iteration: “You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that’s wrong with it and fix it. Seek negative feedback, particularly from friends.”

8. On government licensing: “We have essentially no patents in SpaceX. Our primary long-term competition is in China. If we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese would just use them as a recipe book.”

9. On risk: “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”

10. On his childhood experiments: “It is remarkable how many things you can explode. I’m lucky I have all my fingers.”

11. On hiring: "[My biggest mistake is probably] weighing too much on someone's talent and not someone's personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart."