Ben Horowitz Quotes

Caesar was a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

What is character? It is that quality of man which is going to make a man, in an hour of strain, do the just and, if possible, the generous thing.

There are a lot of smart people in politics and government, but character matters ... it is terribly important that the two be melded.

Know what's important and what isn't. Have the wisdom to know the right thing to do, the integrity to do it, the character to stand up to those who don't, and the courage to stop those who won't.

Leadership is not about popularity, it is about doing what is right.

Leadership is about doing what you know is right - even when a growing din of voices around you is trying to convince you to accept what you know to be wrong.

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

It has been my honor to support and work with President Barack Obama, a man who has brought courage and character to the presidency. President Obama's strength of character leads him to do the right thing, even when it isn't the easy thing.

Say not that honor is the child of boldness, nor believe thou that the hazard of life alone can pay the price of it: it is not to the action that it is due, but to the manner of performing it.

A man of conviction is often more to be desired than a man of experience.

Moral courage is higher and a rarer virtue than physical courage.

I think that there should be a Gaius Baltar Award for Moral Cowardice given out to people every year.

In life, everybody faces choices between doing what's popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what's lonely, difficult, and right. These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful.

I would rather be beaten, and be a man, than to be elected and be a little puppy dog.

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act according to their beliefs.

Political courage is not political suicide.

It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

Every leader has the responsibility to hone his or her integrity. Many times, there are integrity traps that have a tendency to catch well-meaning leaders off guard.

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage, or of principle.

Courage is the most important of the virtues because it is the one that makes all the others possible.

We were elected to lead and sometimes we just have to do the right thing.

Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public men.

The greatest man is he who chooses the Right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully, who is calmest in storms and most fearless under menace and frowns, whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering. I believe this greatness to be most common among the multitude, whose names are never heard.

It is not true that people of high principle are ill-suited for politics.