Ben Horowitz on Action Quotes

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

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

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

"Scaling a company is not just about adding people; it's about evolving the systems that allow those people to be productive."

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"Virtues are what you do. Values are merely what you believe."

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

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

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

"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."

"The struggle is where self-doubt greedily consumes the courage and replaces it with the burning desire to quit."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Wartime CEO always has a Plan B, but they never hesitate to execute Plan A."

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

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

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

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

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