Ben Horowitz on Action Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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