Ben Horowitz on Action Quotes

"If you are going to eat shit, don't nibble."

"You have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to do anything great."

"You can't just have a vision; you have to be able to execute the vision."

"The difference between a good plan and a great one is the speed of execution."

"Being a leader means you have to act even when you don't have all the answers."

"Innovation is not a department; it's a way of acting every single day."

"If you don't like to make hard decisions, you probably shouldn't be a CEO."

"Most things that look like luck are actually the result of relentless action."

"True culture is defined by how your people act when the leader is not in the room."

"Spend zero time on what you could have done, and spend all of your time on what you might do."

"You can have the best strategy in the world, but if you can't execute, it's just paper."

"Action is the only thing that separates the dreamers from the builders."

"Wartime CEO knows that the only thing that matters is winning."

"The most important thing for a leader is to be able to tell the truth, even when it’s hard."

"Take care of the people, the products, and the profits—in that order."

"Don't focus on the pain, focus on the progress."

"Success is the result of thousands of small, correct actions taken over a long period."

"A CEO's job is to manage the psychology of the organization, starting with their own."

"The hardest thing is not the technical challenge; it's the human challenge of keeping people moving."

"By the time you have all the data, the opportunity is usually gone."

"If you don't communicate the 'why', you won't get the 'what' done correctly."

"Execution is about doing the things you don't want to do, but you know you must do."

"Don't let the fear of being wrong stop you from being decisive."

"The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal."

"There are no silver bullets for this, only lead bullets."

"If you are the CEO, you are the one who has to make the call when nobody else wants to."

"The only thing that matters is the move you make next."

"Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly."

"Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, they sweat when they are cold, and they don't quit."

"Culture is not a set of beliefs; it's a set of actions."

"Focus on the things you can control and move as fast as possible on them."

"The only way to learn is to do. You can't read your way into being a leader."

"If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging, and the second is to find a way out."