Leadership Quote by Robert. L. Ehrlich

Ehrlich’s line is a politician’s attempt to reclaim moral clarity from an ecosystem designed to dissolve it. “Doing what you know is right” sounds simple, almost Boy Scout-ish, until he adds the real antagonist: “a growing din of voices.” That phrase isn’t accidental. It captures modern governance as an acoustics problem as much as an ethics problem: the pressure isn’t just opposition, it’s volume. Interest groups, partisan media, donors, activists, polling, social feeds - each one amplifies the idea that compromise isn’t deliberation but surrender.

The quote’s clever move is its appeal to private certainty (“what you know”) in a profession where public uncertainty is often strategic. Ehrlich is arguing that leadership is less about consensus-building than about resisting persuasion when persuasion becomes coercion. The subtext is defensive: if you’re being criticized loudly, that may be evidence you’re doing something brave rather than something misguided. That’s a comforting frame for any elected official navigating blowback.

There’s also a risk baked in. “What you know is right” can describe principled courage, or it can describe stubbornness polished into virtue. By making morality an internal fixed point, the quote sidesteps the harder democratic question: what if the “din” includes constituents with legitimate claims, or experts warning you your certainty is wrong? As political rhetoric, though, it works because it names a feeling nearly every voter recognizes: the sense that loud pressure tries to normalize the unacceptable, and that character is proven when you refuse to play along.