Unable to hide welcome screen in Emacs

Add the following to your $HOME/.emacs:

(setq inhibit-startup-screen t)

The next time you start Emacs, the welcome screen shouldn't appear. If you already have Emacs open with the welcome screen, you can kill it with C-x k (Control-x, then k).

(setq inhibit-splash-screen t)
(setq inhibit-startup-message t)

Alternatively you could:

alias emacs='emacs --no-splash'