Quotes About Meritocracy

All sentient beings are created unequal. The best society provides each with equal opportunity to float at his own level. — The Gowachin Primary

Experience burned into me the conviction that access to education ought to be based on how much you are willing to learn and how hard you are willing to work, not on how many dollars your family has in their bank account.

It is actually getting much harder for someone from an ordinary background to break through the ranks. In the period from 1964 to 1997, every single Prime Minister - from Harold Wilson to John Major - was the product of a state school.

Tennis is very much a meritocracy. There's no favoritism, there's no politics. You either win or lose based on how you perform in the moment.

If you do something really well, the entire world beats a path to your door. The number three, number five, number 400 player gets nothing. It's almost a winner take all.

But feminism isn't served by simply promoting women over men. The winner needs to be the best candidate for the job, not the best candidate of a certain gender.

SpaceX is a flat organization. Anyone gets to talk to anyone, and the best idea wins - even if it comes from an intern.

I don't believe that the American dream should be reserved for those who are born into the elite or somehow have been given an advantage over others. My growing-up experience is probably the most important thing that guides my priorities and my work today.

That's the difference between the NCAA and the NFL right now. They've got to step up and say, 'We're going to do the right thing. We're going to hire qualified people. We're going to hire the best man for the job regardless of what boosters or anyone else has to say.'

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.

The psychologist Barry Schwartz recently proposed that elite schools give up their complex admissions process and simply hold a lottery for everyone above the threshold. "Put people into two categories," Schwartz says. "Good enough and not good enough. The ones who are good enough get put into a hat. And those who are not good enough get rejected.

our notion that it is the best and the brightest who effortlessly rise to the top is much too simplistic.

The answer, of course, is neither. No one is failing anyone. It's just that the very thing that makes elite schools such wonderful places for those at the top makes them very difficult places for everyone else.

the systems we set up to determine who gets ahead aren't particularly efficient.

way the world of classical music picks its future virtuosos, or the way the world of ballet picks its future ballerinas, or the way our elite educational system picks its future scientists and intellectuals. You can't buy your way into Major Junior A hockey. It doesn't matter who your father or mother is, or who your grandfather was, or what business your family is in. Nor does it matter

It would be easier to accept that version of events, however, if we hadn't just looked at hockey and soccer players. Theirs was supposed to be a pure meritocracy as well. Only it wasn't. It was a story of how the outliers in a particular field reached their lofty status through

I no doubt have benefited from affirmative action programs, which looked at my race, gender, and background and determined whether I would be admitted. But I am not ashamed of this fact, nor do I apologize for it. Such programs provided me with the opportunity to prove myself, no more, no less. After admission, my success or failure would be determined by my efforts. I do not consider myself either more or less worthy than my colleagues in the same programs.

If everyone had the same education, the inequality of income would be reduced by less than 10 percent.

Somehow in the public sector, if you start in the mailroom and spend your life getting promoted, it's unseemly.

The meritocratic society has given way to a hereditary meritocracy. The children of the rich are overwhelmingly likely to stay rich.

The meritocratic society has given way to a hereditary meritocracy.

Academic literacy & meritocracy are tertiary; competency & work efficacy are secondary; primary traits required usually are sycophancy & skulduggery/hypocrisy for an employee to rise through the ranks in the private sector corporate hierarchy.

Democracy without meritocracy is just hypocrisy and no different from autocracy.

Flush out politics from the sport to let there be honest selection of the players and its board members, then there is no reason why that particular game will not attain its glory and bring laurel to the nation.