Greatness is not intelligence. Greatness comes from character. And character isn’t formed out of smart people, it’s formed out of people who suffered –  Jensen Huang 

In a message for the students at Stanford University the Nvidia CEO’s message declared that greatness come from character as a result of suffering.

His exact words were:

Greatness is not intelligence. Greatness comes from character. And character isn’t formed out of smart people, it’s formed out of people who suffered. – Jensen Huang

You can see the video below:

My opinion:
I will try to be gentle, Jensen Huang is a successful CEO, he is surely a smart individual, but that does not make his words truth by default. As a matter of fact there is a logical fallacy called “argument by/from authority”, that tricks us to believe things just because they were said by an authority figure.

Thus, not just because Jensen Huang is successful, it means he has access to the infinite wisdom of the universe. As a matter of fact, i do believe he is 100% wrong with his statement.
In this statement Huang is projecting his journey, on a template, and declaring this template the only valid way for greatness. I think, character is formed in many ways, not only through hardship. And greatness can be the result of luck, and finds it’s way to all types of characters.

This projection, is something many entrepreneurs tend to do, in a way to avoid to say they were lucky:
Stress doesn’t come from hard work. Stress primarily comes from not taking action over something that you can have some control over – Jeff Bezos

Not everything these founders and CEOs say, is valid, i would even say most things they say is wrong. Just have a look at this debate:
Jack Ma, stupid remarks about technology