Quotes & Sayings About Meritocracy

In addition to labeling kids who learn differently as problematic, sometimes defective, most schools classify, track, and categorize students from very early ages. As an abundance of research studies confirm, these classifications tend to become self-perpetuating and self-confirming. My interviewees illuminate the ways in which grades, tests, and opportunities to learn are often arbitrary or related to class, race, and gender. In the supposed meritocracy of schooling, these markers and estimations have profound impact, not just structuring how we fit into the learning hierarchy of an individual classroom, but who we are who whom we believe we will become. — Kirsten Olson

It's not a meritocracy until everyone starts with the same opportunities, is it? — Laura Wade

We should strive to make our society more like Summer Showtime: Mostly a meritocracy, despite some vicious backstabbing. Everyone gets a spot in the chorus. Bring white shorts from home. — Tina Fey

That is the great danger of meritocracy: the people who reach the top of the system are precisely the people who have most completely identified with the system and its demands, creating a vicious circle preventing any actual change. It is no accident that conservatives tend to employ the rhetoric of social mobility so readily, as social climbers generally do not ask questions about the ladder. — Adam Kotsko

I grew up believing in meritocracy and the American dream. My parents came here from India. They had no connections. My brother and I went to public schools, and both of us succeeded. — Leila Janah

The dissonance that I felt daily flew in the face of what Silicon Valley says about itself: that it is a meritocracy, that it values intelligence and creativity, that everyone has a fair shot if they just work hard enough. This was true only if you were technical, and even that may not always be enough: in the age of the social network, who you know and who your friends were was becoming increasingly important. — Katherine Losse

The modern world is a meritocracy where you earn your own luck, old school ties count for nothing, and inherited privilege can even lose a guy a clear parliamentary majority. — Kate Reardon

Dating is probably the most fraught human interaction there is. You're sizing people up to see if they're worth your time and attention, and they're doing the same to you. It's meritocracy applied to personal life, but there's no accountability. We submit ourselves to these intimate inspections and simultaneously inflict them on others and try to keep our psyches intact - to keep from becoming cold and callous - and we hope that at the end of it we wind up happier than our grandparents, who didn't spend this vast period of their lives, these prime years, so thoroughly alone, coldly and explicitly anatomized again and again. — Adelle Waldman

One of my greatest pleasures in writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the saddening realization that such people rarely read. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The thing I like most about football is it's a meritocracy. — Andrew Luck

MERIT AND HARMONY PROMOTE MOBILISATION — Miguel Reynolds Brandao

This argument has been codified in the twentieth century as meritocracy, in which those on top in the process of capitalist accumulation have merited their position. — Immanuel Wallerstein

Radical transparency is critical to having an idea meritocracy because it shows what's actually happening without spin and prevents people from maneuvering politically behind each others' backs. It brings problems and weaknesses to the surface and allows people to see how they are dealt with, so it's great for training people on how to deal with real problems. — Ray Dalio

Here, dear reader, you must summon patient compassion. Try to imagine the hardships of a military officer triply burdened by close relationships with political leaders and the national news media, an Ivy League PhD, and wartime triumphs leading an elite airborne division. Our hero somehow survived in spite of it all. He rose against his handicaps, triumphing over the awful mark of Princeton University, that great gathering place for outcasts, rebels, and the socially obscure. He secured higher military rank even though he had been successful in combat. He adroitly worked CBS News, the Washington Post, and the United States Senate, yet still rose to prominence. — Chris Bray

It's not your status as an orogene that bothers them. It's that you haven't yet proven yourself.

(It is surprising how refreshing this feels. Being judged by what you do, and not what you are.) — N.K. Jemisin

Male, female, gay, straight, legal, illegal, country of origin - who cares? You can either cook an omelet or you can't. You can either cook five hundred omelets in three hours - like you said you could, and like the job requires - or you can't. There's no lying in the kitchen. The restaurant kitchen may indeed be the last, glorious meritocracy - where anybody with the skills and the heart is welcomed. But if you're old, or out of shape - or were never really certain about your chosen path in the first place - then you will surely and quickly be removed. Like a large organism's natural antibodies fighting off an invading strain of bacteria, the life will slowly push you out or kill you off. Thus it is. Thus it shall always be. The ideal progression for a nascent culinary career would be to, first, take a jump straight into the deep end of the pool. Long before student loans and culinary school, take the trouble to find out who you are. — Anthony Bourdain

Overt bigotry, Jim Crow laws and policies, government-mandated discrimination, and the belief in black inferiority have virtually disappeared. Laissez-faire racism, instead, involves persistent negative stereotyping of African Americans, a tendency to blame blacks for their own conditions, appeals to meritocracy, and resistance to meaningful policy efforts to ameliorate America's racist social conditions and institutions. Government is formally race neutral and committed to antidiscrimination, and most white Americans prefer a more volitional and cultural, as opposed to inherent and biological, interpretation of blacks' disadvantage status. — Thomas M. Shapiro

This myth of meritocracy and equal opportunities encourages individualism over collective action, because when people believe this myth, they obviously see no need for protest movements around particular classes or identities, such as the Women's Movement or the Civil Rights workplace, education or in their personal lives, they are more likely to blame themselves, rather than sexism, racism, class oppression or homophobia; concepts which in current society are often seen as out of date. This type of blame even applies to experiences of actual violence or harassment with too many people believing that it is their fault if they are sexually harassed in the workplace or at school, abused by a partner or are a victim of sexual violence. Our society encourages this view, and in turn, that keeps people isolated and alone, rather than providing them the opportunity to get involved in collective struggles against such common experiences. — Finn Mackay

The thing about TV is it's a meritocracy. I love that aspect of it - and I've had shows that have gone on the air and been canceled. I've seen the good and the bad of it. — Doug Liman

The Korean private market had unbundled education down to the one in-school variable that mattered most: the teacher. It was about as close to a pure meritocracy as it could be, and just as ruthless. In hagwons, teachers were free agents. They did not need to be certified. They didm;t have benefits or even guaranteed base salary; their pay was determined by how many students signed up for their classes, by their students' test-score growth, and, in many hagwons, by the results of satisfaction surveys given to students and parents. — Amanda Ripley

The world is not a meritocracy, as much as we may like to pretend that it is. And we have a long way to go before we really reward people based on their own merit. — Malcolm Gladwell

Many of these slaveholding populists were celebrated by posterity as tribunes of the common people. Meanwhile, the self-made Hamilton, a fervent abolitionist and a staunch believer in meritocracy, was villainized in American history textbooks as an apologist of privilege and wealth. — Ron Chernow

STRATEGY, MERIT AND HARMONY CREATE SUSTAINABILITY! — Miguel Reynolds Brandao

Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings. — Chinua Achebe

Yes, the United States is still the great meritocracy it's always been; but now, if you aren't brilliant or beautiful or both, there isn't much to do, because they can do it cheaper in Shanghai or Mumbai. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

America is a meritocracy. — P. J. O'Rourke

The first commendment of hte post 1970s meritocracy can be sumed up as follows: "Thou shall provide equality of opportunity to all, regardless of race, gender, or sexual oritentation, but worry not about equality of outcomes." But what we've seen time and time again is that the two aren't so neatly separated. If you don't concern yourself at all with equality fo outcomes, you will, over time, produce a system with horrendous inequality of opportunity. This is the paradox of meritocracy: It can only truly come to flower in a society that starts out with a relatively high degree of equality. So if you want meritocracy, work for equality. Because it is only in a society which values equality of actual outcomes, one that promotes the commonweal and social solidarity, that equal opportunity and earned mobility can flourish. — Christopher L. Hayes

The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it's not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can't teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired. It's terrible. — Steve Jobs

All companies can benefit from fostering a more flexible environment (creating a place where the most talented, industrious, and entrepreneurial people want to work) and relinquishing hierarchical control to favor a results-oriented meritocracy. — Maynard Webb

There is socialism in the family that conflicts with meritocracy. And that bothered me. — Uday Kotak

A real democracy would be a meritocracy where those born in the lower ranks could rise as far as their natural talents and discipline might take them. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Good deeds must be rewarded by the system and crimes be punished - this is the essence of meritocracy. — Imran Khan

The bottom line is that any business should be a meritocracy. The best and brightest. Period. — Billy Beane

We don't have to sit by and watch our meritocracy be replaced by a permanent aristocracy, and our democracy be undermined by dynastic wealth. — Robert Reich

America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure. — Toby Young

Socialism is not a meritocracy. By definition it places increasingly confining restraints on those that succeed the most. — A.E. Samaan

Merit has replaced the old system of inherited privilege, in which parents to the manner born handed down the manor to their children. But merit, it turns out, is at least partly class-based. Parents with money, education, and connections cultivate in their children the habits that the meritocracy rewards. When their children then succeed, their success is seen as earned. — The New York Times

SUSTAINABILITY EMPOWERS JUSTICE, SECURITY AND ULTIMATELY, HAPPINESS — Miguel Reynolds Brandao

What took me to cooking was that there was something honest about it, says David Chang. There is no lying in the kitchen. And no god there, either. He couldn't help you anyway. You either can - or can't - make an omelet. You either can - or can't - chop an onion, shake a pan, keep up with the other cooks, replicate again and again, perfectly, the dishes that need to be done. No credential, no amount of bullshit, no well-formed sentences or pleas for mercy will change the basic facts. The kitchen is the last meritocracy - a world of absolutes; one knows without any ambiguity at the end of each day how one did. — Anthony Bourdain

Meritocracy is our social ideal, particularly among good liberals. Equality of opportunity, but not of outcome. Not evaluating people by their [outside] features, but by their innate talent and drive. — Chris Hayes

Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up. In other words: 'Who says meritocracy says oligarchy.' — Chris Hayes

Poetry is a pure meritocracy. There's no room for ambiguity: either a poem moves you and opens up new vistas in life, or it doesn't. It's completely objective, and the best always rise to the top. — Jim Goetz

You can't have a competitive, egalitarian meritocracy if only some of your citizens have the opportunity for a good education. — Rupert Murdoch

The military is a meritocracy. It's an up or out. It's shaped like a pyramid. — Tanya Biank

I recognize that Hollywood is not about seniority. Often it's not even a meritocracy. It's about what you did yesterday. You have a couple of misses, and suddenly it's impossible to find a hit. So the swings are gigantic. But I've always understood it as such, and navigated it as such. — Ben Affleck

A lot of people think big business in America is a bad thing. I think it's a really good thing. Most people in business are ethical, hard-working, good people. And it's a meritocracy. — Steve Jobs

Comedians have varying levels of training. It can range from classically trained actors (like Robin Williams) to people who took comedy classes to folks who just started doing it. That's the beauty of comedy: it's close to a pure meritocracy. — Ted Alexandro

I think you are looking at sexuality and not attributes, and I think it's odd because the conservative mantra is a meritocracy. And I think what you're suggesting is the fact that being gay parents makes you not as good as others. And I would suggest that a loving, gay family with a financially secure background beats the hell out of Britney Spears and Kevin Federline any day of the week. — Jon Stewart

Silicon Valley is not a perfect meritocracy, but it is open to all who are highly motivated. For example, there is a dearth of women, Hispanics, and African Americans in Silicon Valley. — Deborah Perry Piscione

When it comes to work, there is a fear factor around meritocracy. People are afraid of being openly judged. However, when you know what you are being measured against, it's empowering. — Maynard Webb

Optimism is the parent of despair, while pessimism allows the mind to accustom itself to the inevitable disappointments of human existence by degrees, just as some drugs induce a state of tolerance. Pessimists, moreover, have the better sense of humour, for they have a livelier apprehension of pretension and absurdity. In a meritocracy, furthermore, those who fail must either indulge in elaborate mental contortions to disguise reality from themselves or sink into a deep melancholy. — Anthony Daniels

If someone's deeds lower his position, his pedigree cannot elevate it. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

With a blade at your throat, a well-connected uncle or a wealthy mother could not save you. Only you could save yourself. — Natalia Marx

the upper classes instinctively abandoned idleness and invented meritocracy lest universal suffrage deprive them of everything they owned. — Thomas Piketty

Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you?" He answered, "Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one. — Ayn Rand

Chess is a meritocracy. — Lawrence Day

Let's make health care a meritocracy. Access to the best care goes to people who did what they could to avoid becoming ill. — Astro Teller

What is different in capitalist civilization has been two things. First, the process of meritocracy has been proclaimed as an official virtue instead of being merely a de facto reality. The culture has been different. And secondly, the percentage of the world's population for whom such ascent was possible has gone up. But even though it has grown up, meritocratic ascent remains very much the attribute of a minority. — Immanuel Wallerstein

For me, white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own. — Peggy McIntosh

Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal ( ... ). There is a tendency ( ... ) for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious-because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe-some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others-some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men. — Harper Lee

I loved working on Wall Street. I loved the meritocracy of it and the camaraderie of the trading floor. — Chelsea Clinton

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already. — Peggy McIntosh

Los Angeles is such a great meritocracy. Where can someone with my background - don't have the right family background, the right religion, the right provenance or whatever you want to call it - I come here and I'm accepted. The city's been good to me. And I want to give back. — Eli Broad

A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in their health and genetic endowment; luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement and, probably, income; luckiest in their educational and career opportunities; and luckiest in so many other ways difficult to enumerate - these are the folks who reap the largest rewards. — Ben Bernanke

The ills of the world, and their cures, are listed below: 1) A world of privilege is a world of elitism and injustice. Meritocracy is the cure. 2) Capitalism, the creed of "Greed is good", is the disease of materialism and objectification for the sole purpose of profiting the ownership class. A new spiritual, artistic, creative and intellectual paradigm is the cure. 3) Abrahamism is a mental illness. Illuminism is the psychological cure. 4) The religious divide between East and West has held back global progress. Illuminism, a religion of enlightenment and reincarnation in common with Eastern thinking, yet steeped in the most profound Western thinking, is the bridge. The — Michael Faust

And if an increasingly pluralistic America ever decides to commission a new motto, I'm open for business, because I've got a better one than E pluribus unum. Tu dormis, tu perdis ... You snooze, you lose. — Paul Beatty

When it comes to meritocracy and diversity, the symbolic is real. And that means that simple actions that reduce bias, such as blind resume or application screening, are a double win: they reduce implicit bias and they help communicate our commitment to meritocracy. — Eric Ries

Creating a meritocracy requires equal participation by both the hippo, who could rule the day by fiat, and the brave smart creative, who risks getting trampled as she stands up for quality and merit. — Eric Schmidt

Enforcing equality to compensate for the monstrous unfairness of nature destroys liberty. But total liberty leads to various forms of aristocracy and decay. Yet total equality leads to oppressive statism and decay. However, equality of opportunity leads to a vibrantly chaotic and creative meritocracy. — Peter J. Carroll

Self-actualization is what educated existence is all about. For members of the educated class, life is one long graduate school. When they die, God meets them at the gates of heaven, totes up how many fields of self-expression they have mastered, and then hands them a divine diploma and lets them in. — David Brooks

If we are to create a decent society, a just society, a wise and prosperous society, a society where children can learn for the love of learning and people can work for the love of work, then that ids what we must believe. We don't have to love our neighbors as ourselves, but we need to love our neighbor's children as our own. We have tried aristocracy. We have tried meritocracy. Now it's time to try democracy."

"It comes to this: the elite have purchased self-perpetuation at the price of their children's happiness. Th e more hoops kids have to jump through, the more it costs to get them through them and the fewer families can do it. But the more they have to jump through, the more miserable they are. — William Deresiewicz

The parental relationship sits outside the
the logic of meritocracy and is the closest humans come to grace. — David Brooks

You don't need to know someone personally to be able to discern whether their work is high quality or not. The idea of a meritocracy is that it's what they do, not who they are. — Matt Mullenweg

If Anonymous and Lulzsec are the id of hacking, then physical hackerspaces are the heart of the higher-minded hacking ideals: freedom of information, meritocracy of ideas, a joy of learning and anti-authoritarianism. — Heather Brooke

Meritocracy is a social arrangement like any other: it is a loose set of rules that can be adapted in order to obscure advantages, all the while justifying them on the basis of collective values. pg. 199 — Shamus Rahman Khan

The key to entering into the Divine Exchange is never our worthiness but always God's graciousness. Any attempt to measure or increase our worthiness will always fall short, or it will force us into the position of denial and pretend, which produces the constant perception of hypocrisy in religious people.
To switch to an "economy of grace" is a switch that is very hard for humans to make. We base almost everything in human culture on achievement, performance, accomplishment, an equal exchange value, or some kind of worthiness gauge. I call it meritocracy. Unless one personally experiences a dramatic and personal breaking of the rules of merit (forgiveness or undeserved goodness), it is almost impossible to disbelieve or operate outside of its rigid logic. This cannot happen theoretically or abstractly. It cannot happen "out there" but must be known personally "in here. — Richard Rohr

Comedy is a meritocracy. If you are funny, you are there. If you are not, you are out. — Kevin Feige

Is class snobbery a social reality in the United States? Absolutely, and the kind that's codified by meritocracy is probably more toxic than the old-fashioned kind based on bloodlines. — Timothy Noah

We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained. — Derrick A. Bell

We need democracy and meritocracy, not mockracy and hypocrisy. — TheKeyAuthor

Perhaps it is the case that no organization or hierarchy can withstand the closest of scrutiny. Not even a smugly self-touted meritocracy. The success and persistence of utter fools everywhere is sad testament to that. — Ian C. Esslemont

Once you experience being loved when you are unworthy, being forgiven when you did something wrong, that moves you into non-dual thinking. You move from what I call meritocracy, quid pro quo thinking, to the huge ocean of grace, where you stop counting or calculating. — Richard Rohr

One of the best things about being an actor is that it's a meritocracy. — Benedict Cumberbatch

Infosys is an absolute meritocracy. Even in a meritocracy, other things being equal, you have to give opportunity to the more experienced candidate. — N. R. Narayana Murthy

The Four Great Chinese Inventions - compass, gun-powder, paper, and print - are legendary. Less talked about are meritocracy and banknotes. — Thorsten J. Pattberg

The average Harvard freshman in 1952 would have placed in the bottom 10 percent of the incoming class by 1960. — Charles Murray

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. — H.L. Mencken

Still, a part of me will never stop thinking of her as my sergeant. She's the toughest, most competent, and most evenhanded soldier I've known, and she runs her squad as a strict meritocracy. If only a tenth of the military consisted of people like Sergeant Fallon, we would have kicked the SRA off of every inhabited celestial body between Earth and Zeta Reticuli fifty years ago already. As things stand, we're weighed down by people like Major Unwerth, who coast through the system doing only the expected minimum. If a military is the reflection of the society it serves, it's amazing that the Commonwealth is still at the top of the food chain on Terra. Even with all the dead wood in our ranks, we have been able to hold the line against the SRA and the dozens of regional powers in the Middle East and the Pacific Rim that are short on resources and long on grievances with their neighbors. — Marko Kloos

People always knock what's new but I love the modern Internet, where cleverness is currency. Social media is a cleverness meritocracy. We're living in it. — Alexei Maxim Russell

You need to mesh the voices of people with expertise and meritocracy. — N. R. Narayana Murthy

Pew's Economic Mobility Project reports, "Germany is 1.5 times more mobile than the United States, Canada nearly 2.5 times more mobile, and Denmark 3 times more mobile."58 They find that the only other country with similarly low levels of mobility is our sibling in meritocracy, the birthplace of the word itself, the United Kingdom. And — Christopher L. Hayes

One of the great joys of launching your idea on the web is that it's a meritocracy. The good stuff will rise to the top and find an audience, and you don't have to impress one idiosyncratic commissioning editor. — Rob Manuel

At its most basic, the logic of 'meritocracy' is ironclad: putting the most qualified, best equipped people into the positions of greates responsibility and import ... But my central contention is that our near-religious fidelity to the meritocratic model comes with huge costs. We overestimate the advantages of meritocracy and underappreciate its costs, because we don't think hard enough about the consequences of the inequality it produces. As Americans, we take it as a given that unequal levels of achievement are natural, even desirable. Sociologist Jermole Karabel, whose work looks at elite formation, once said he 'didnt think any advanced democracy is as obsessed with equality of opportunity or as relatively unconcerned with equality of condition' as the United States. This is our central problem. And my proposed solution for correcting the excesses of our extreme version of meritocracy is quite simple: make America more equal — Christopher L. Hayes

Liberalism is the ideology at the center of conservative arguments against affirmative action and equal opportunity. By proposing that, all things being equal, everyone has the same opportunity to compete in the U.S. marketplace, success is determined by how hard someone works and not by their economic class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or race. Ethnic and racial identities are to be assimilated, lost, and erased through the celebrated "melting pot" of U.S. culture. Liberalism thus devalues the importance of communitarian experiences and social identities as determinants or barriers to individual success. Instead, it proposes that all individuals are fundamentally equal and that, regardless of their social identity, everyone can control his or her fate through hard work, learned skills, and acquired education- the foundational myth of a U.S. meritocracy. — Isabel Molina-Guzman

I'm much more comfortable in a meritocracy and in reward for good work as opposed to a political environment, where I feel like all of that can be confused. — Desiree Rogers

An egalitarian educational system is necessarily opposed to meritocracy and reward for achievement. It is inevitably opposed to procedures that might reveal differing levels of achievement. — Robert Bork

The meritocracy offered liberation from the unjust hierarchies of race, gender, and sexual orientation, but swapped in their place a new hierarchy based on the notion that people are deeply unequal in ability and drive. — Christopher L. Hayes

For a meritocracy to work, it needs to engender a culture where there is an "obligation to dissent". — Eric Schmidt

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. — Winston S. Churchill

Where the establishment emphasized humility, prudence, lineage, meritocracy celebrates ambition, achievement, brains&self-betterment — Christopher Hayes