Rutherford B. Hayes Quotes

It is also absolutely necessary that the examinations should be competitive, and the appointments given to those who are most successful. A mere pass examination never, in the long run, does more than exclude absolute dunces.

… open, competitive examinations for testing the fitness of applicants for the public service now classified or to be classified hereunder. Such examinations shall be practical in their character, and so far as may be shall relate to those matters which will fairly test the relative capacity and fitness of the persons examined to discharge the duties of the service into which they seek to be appointed.

I grow more conservative every day on the question of removals. On ex parte statements, I have made mistakes in removing men who, perhaps, ought to have been retained, and in appointing wrong men. Not many removals have been made. Less than any Administration since John Q. Adams. But I shall be more cautious in future; make removals only in clear cases, and appoint only on the best and fullest evidence of fitness.

Lord Melbourne entirely agrees with your Majesty about appointments. He knows, as your Majesty does from experience, that with all the claims which there are to satisfy, with all the prejudices which are to be encountered, and with all the interests which require to be reconciled, it is impossible to select the best men, or even always those properly qualified.

I think any position in any international organization should be merit-based.

The public character of every public servant is legitimate subject of discussion, and his fitness or unfitness for office may be fairly canvassed by any person.

In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.

If we want the most effective fighting force, we need to pick the most qualified capable man for the job, even if it's a woman.

To have full and multiple criteria is the best way to decide who is best prepared to be on that Olympic team.

Everybody, be they female, whatever your religion, whatever your nationality, you're an individual, and if you perform well, we want you, and if you don't, we don't.

The State, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their opinions. If they be willing faithfully to serve it, that satisfies.

Sport doesn't know barriers, really. You are judged on your performance... how far you can jump, how fast you can run, how well you can hit a tennis ball.

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.

Let me control personnel, and I will ultimately control policy.

For most Americans nepotism is first and last a class issue—a way for the rich to warehouse their unemployable offspring while keeping the lower classes in their place. In fact however systematic nepotism has been practiced more or less continuously by both the upper and the lower classes without ambivalence or apology. It was the middle class that pushed the merit principle, rising as it did through the institutions of the market and the state.

One mode of the misappropriation of public funds is avoided when appointments to office, instead of being the rewards of partisan activity, are awarded to those whose efficiency promises a fair return of work for the compensation paid to them.

In appointments to office the government refuses to know any difference between descriptions of republicans…

Though the first admission to government employment be decided by competitive examination, it would in most cases be impossible that subsequent promotion should be so decided: and it seems proper that this should take place, as it usually does at present, on a mixed system of seniority and selection.

What we called the Civil Service was, in the main, merely a mass of Republican political appointees frozen into office by act of Congress.

Government posts are for sale, preventing some poor people with abilities from serving in those positions.

The power of the officials and their independence, in case they were opposed by strong social influences, was increased by the fact that the officials were strangers in the districts in which they were employed, for Frederick William continued the policy of appointing only strangers to the district to official positions...

So, sir, it comes to this at last, that … the dunce who had been crammed up to a diploma at Yale, and comes fresh from his cramming, will be preferred in all civil service appointments to the ablest, most successful, and most upright business man of the country, who either did not enjoy the benefit of early education, or from whose mind, long engrossed in practical pursuits, the details and niceties of academic knowledge have faded away as the headlands disappear when the mariner bids his native land good night.

I ask the attention of the public to the paramount necessity of reform in our civil service—a reform not merely as to certain abuses and practices of so-called official patronage which have come to have the sanction of usage in the several Departments of our Government, but a change in the system of appointment itself; a reform that shall be thorough, radical, and complete; a return to the principles and practices of the founders of the Government.

Before I was elected President I thought the chief pleasure of it would be to give honors and offices to old friends. But you know you can't do that when you're President of the United States; you have to get the best men.

No politics, no committees, no reports, no referees, no interviews – just highly motivated people picked by a few men of good judgment.