Kenneth C. Griffin Quotes

I think this country is genuinely a meritocracy.

Conservatives often say that we should care not about equality of outcomes but about equality of opportunity.

In a country where there is no privileged class, genius and industry may attain the highest honors.

America is a meritocracy.

The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality of result. It's equality of opportunity. There's a fundamental difference.

The American dream, to me, means having the opportunity to achieve, because I don't think you should be guaranteed anything other than opportunity.

The intelligent quest is for the free society with equality of opportunity. The quest for equality of result is the path to the widest equality of all: despotism.

Obama is the splendid fruit of a meritocracy.

I feel passionately that the opportunities I have had should be available to everyone.

The status quo is never happy when things become a meritocracy.

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.

If your only opportunity is to be equal then it is not opportunity.

We know that equality of individual ability has never existed and never will, but we do insist that equality of opportunity still must be sought.

To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages today that determine success--the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history--with a society that provides opportunities for all.

Fairness is not the end result, it's the opportunity. And everybody in America today has the opportunity to get ahead.

Middle America believes in fair play, an equal opportunity to succeed or to fail.

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

I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy - I don't disparage envy, but I don't accept it as legitimately my master.

Democracy presumes that we're all created equal; competition proves we are not, or else every race would end in a tie.

We must restore the emotional relationship that people have to the idea of America, that no matter where you come from, no matter where you live, that you have access to the same opportunities that somebody who is born in privilege.

My feeling is, having lived in different classes, that people want equality of opportunity... that's the thing that makes me despair: the idea that people aren't given equality of opportunity.

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.

This is what America is about when it comes to understanding that it is equal opportunity versus equal achievement. Each and every one of us has the opportunity for greatness in this country.

Everybody should have an equal chance - but they shouldn't have a flying start.

The advantages and privileges which have hitherto enjoyed by the few shall be far more widely shared by the many.