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Meritocracy Quotes

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Meritocracy Quotes

“Humanizing Democracy (A Sonnet) Dictatorship is rule of the cunning, Democracy is rule of the halfwits. Both are quite degrading for society, Cause neither of them is born of merits. Progress requires practice of reason, Immersed in a whole lot of love. But when the people prefer indifference, Society regresses down the savage curve. Character is the foundation of civilization, Yet that character is taken for granted. All talk and no walk has made us shallow, Separatism has made our soul tainted. So it’s time we feed values into democracy, While abolishing all populist fallacy.”

DemocracySocial JusticeIndifferenceNationalismDictatorshipBlack Lives MatterSonnetSocial DevelopmentPopulismMeritocracy
Book:Time to End Democracy: The Meritocratic Manifesto
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“The Iron Law of Meritocracy states that eventually the inequality produced by a meritocratic system will grow large enough to subvert the mechanisms of mobility. Unequal outcomes make equal opportunity impossible….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.”

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Book:Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
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“Capitalism is not evil per se. It is the particular implementation that is evil – the one designed to cater for a small super rich elite who call all of the shots and create global empires outwith the control of the State and the people. This model of capitalism is not a servant of the people, but a Dictatorship of Mammon. The world can be free only when the controllers are removed from power. Only one policy guarantees the end of the super rich – 100% inheritance tax.”

EvilStateMeritocracyInheritance TaxMammonSocial CapitalismRich Elites
Book:Voices of the Movement
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“Neoliberalism insists that if we work hard enough, we can earn as much money as anyone else. Of course, the concept of meritocracy is integral to neoliberalism and erases the reality of capital itself, that capitalism is not just material capital but also, importantly, social and cultural capital. Without these forms of capital, (p. 77) one cannot, in fact, “succeed” in a capitalist culture. One obvious example is the art world, where one can only have their work shown in a gallery if they have connections to that gallery (galleries do not, for the most part, accept unsolicited submissions). All the cash in the world can’t create the generations of social connections of a middle-class family, whose circle might include art collectors, gallerists, critics, and artists. It is also the values and unspoken rules of the ruling class that distinguish who is allowed in and who is not.”

ValuesWorkMiddle ClassCapitalistWorking ClassCapitalNeoliberalismMeritocracy
Book:The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class
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“...it's perhaps time to admit that our perennial call to "work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation" has become something of an empty shibboleth. The petty, tribal, precriptive, censorious, identity-obsessed and philistine culture the SNP have created has left many older centrist heids reluctant to speak up over matters of simple common sense and public concern, conceding many of them not just to the right (with whom they are now occasionally driven to make common cause), but - far more dangerously - to the self-declared racists, sexists, homophobes and fascists who should represent our common enemy. The SNP are also, in their current incarnation, poor stewards of the independence dream. As we enter a pre-war era of economic uncertainty and shifting alliances, rediscovering it will be a far more sober and adult task than we have previously had to face. We first must decide what it is we mean by "better nation". It will have to be one with considerably more courage, genuine inclusivity and stomach for honest and civil debate than we currently demonstrate. It will require us to tackle the kinds of broad disadvantage that animate the electorate, as well as those narrow causes which excite our political and institutional leaders. It will require an Enlightenment-style revival of an artistic and intellectual meritocracy, one which can actively connect and draw on the talents of an increasingly diverse but distinctively Scottish society.”

CultureIndependenceIntellectScotlandMeritocracyIdentity PoliticsPolitical CulturePhilistinismScottish NationalismSnp
Book:Irish Pages, Vol. 12, No. 2: Scotland
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“Meritocracy is not a pass/fail system, but rather a system that allows each person to find their own highest attainment. There is no shame in being less than first in a particular field or endeavor – it is simply that the other person had more skills suited for that particular event. Meritocracy gives everyone the best possible chance. It doesn’t promise victory for everyone. Only the very best will win.”

EffortQualitySocietyCompetitionExcellenceMeritocracyRankSocial Capitalism
Book:Voices of the Movement
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“I recognized that the racialized liberalism in which I was educated--where we strive for a bigger part of some mythological pie that our fractured identities are in competition for--leaves us without a language with which to talk about inequality. It leaves black and white in perpetual opposition, a state that feeds the plantation mentality.”

IdentityEqualityInequalityHierarchyMeritocracyIdentity PoliticsRacialization
Book:Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging
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“Notwithstanding the extravagance of some of their characters, these nineteenth-century novelists describe a world in which inequality was to a certain extent necessary: if there had not been a sufficiently wealthy minority, no one would have been able to worry about anything other than survival. This view of inequality deserves credit for not describing itself as meritocratic, if nothing else. In a sense, a minority was chosen to live on behalf of everyone else, but no one tried to pretend that this minority was more meritorious or virtuous than the rest. … Modern meritocratic society, especially in the United States, is much harder on the losers, because it seeks to justify domination on the ground of justice, virtue, and merit, to say nothing of the insufficient productivity of those at the bottom.”

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Author:Thomas Piketty
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“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”

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Book:Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
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“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.”

EqualityInequalityMeritocracySocial Solidarity
Book:Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
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“Meritocracy is based on the absolute destruction of the rigged race of life, via the introduction of 100% inheritance tax, i.e. an overwhelming advantage can no longer be passed on by rich parents to their children. All children, no matter the wealth of their parents, must begin at the same starting line as everyone else. No parent can rig the race. The 1% can no longer dictate the outcome of the race”

RaceMeritocracy1Inheritance Tax
Book:The Case for Meritocracy
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“A 2002 Wall Street Journal article provided eye-opening details about how comprehensive review worked in practice. UCLA had accepted a Hispanic girl with SATs of 940, while rejecting a Korean student with 1500s. The Korean student hardly lived in the lap of luxury. He tutored children to pay rent for his divorced mother, who developed breast cancer.”

Affirmative ActionMeritocracyUcla
Book:The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture
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“Один зі способів зрозуміти нещодавню історію — уявити собі чергу по каву: уранці ви йдете до «Старбаксу», відчайдушно потребуючи чашки звичайної кави, перш ніж почнете класти цеглу, а тим часом молода особа в костюмі для йоги від Lulu Lemon влізає перед вами без черги і замовляє лате без піни зі знежиреним мигдалевим молоком — на двадцять осіб. Потім ця людина, яка влізла без черги, обертається до вас і починає читати вам лекцію про те, який ви сексист, агресивний «расист, котрому, перш ніж висловлюватися, варто згадати про свої привілеї.”

RebellionAristocracyProletariatMeritocracyMarginalization
Book:The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World
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“My dream is one world family, not one world government – my dream is a world where civilians bear the responsibility for the affairs of their society according to their capacity and expertise, not some halfwit political overlords. The mission is to build a nonpartisan world, not to delegate all social responsibilities from countless little puny political nitwits to one giant global git.”

OnenessAdvaitaInternational RelationsPeace ActivistOne HumanityGeopoliticsWorld Is FamilyMeritocracyOne World GovernmentNonpartisanism
Book:Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth
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“Till we successfully build a meritocratic society, the integrity of a democracy remains predicated on the integrity of the civil servants. Civil servants are the first defenders of democracy, against crooked politicians as well as angry, mindless mobs.”

DemocracyPolitical ScienceSocial StudiesMeritocracyPublic ServantsCivil ServantsCivil ServiceSocial Sciences
Book:Good Scientist: When Science and Service Combine
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“Welcome to the anti-meritocratic world, this world. What are you going to do about it? Will you stand back and watch while cronyism, nepotism, the old school tie, the private club, the right university, the right accent, the right background, the right secret society, the right religion, the right family, destroy merit so that their chosen ones can prosper at your expense. It’s time to smash the conspiracy. Break up all the mechanisms that allow privileged groups within society to rig the system in their favour and penalise anyone who doesn’t belong to their insidious cliques.”

PrivilegeCorruptionNetworkingMeritocracyNepotismCronyism
Book:The Meritocracy Party
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“It is one of the defining features of any bureaucracy that those who staff it are selected by formal, impersonal criteria. Most often, some kind of test. That is, bureaucrats are not, say, elected like politicians. But neither should they get the job just because they are someone's cousin. In theory, they are meritocracies. In fact, everyone knows that the system is compromised in a thousand different ways. Many of the staff are, in fact, there just because they are someone's cousin. And everybody knows it.”

PoliticsHypocrisyBureaucracyComplicityMeritocracyFormalityNepotismStaffing
Book:The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
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“Our predecessors around the world in the path of service and reform, made a huge progress by establishing democracy as a civilized alternative to the primitive practice of dictatorship. Now, we stand at yet another crossroads of societal progress, where we must replace our current merit-less and childish democracy with the civilized alternative of meritocratic democracy.”

GovernmentPoliticsDemocracyProgressPolitical PhilosophyPolitical ScienceMeritocracyDemocracy QuotesPolitical Psychology
Book:When Humans Unite: Making A World Without Borders
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