Jim Barksdale Quotes

When you are racing in an able-bodied competition, you're all equal and you go out there and try your best, and that's what counts.

I am a believer in people succeeding on merit.

Let the path be open to talent.

In the field of sports you are more or less accepted for what you do rather than what you are.

If you're good at it, you can win.

Merit should count more than academic background.

Professionalism is not sportsmanship. If you don't succeed, you won't be in your profession for long. In our society, it's not about good or bad. It's about who's on top.

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

Equality of opportunity means the achievers must be allowed to achieve.

Win with ability, not with numbers.

If you are good enough, you should play.

If you have the talent, you should have the opportunity.

If you work hard and you're somewhat talented, you'll be successful in this league.

Anyone can achieve it if they're given the opportunity to.

Greatness has nothing to do with diversity, skin color, race, ethnicity, nothing to do with it.

Usually I object when someone makes over-much of men's work versus women's work, for I think it is the excellence of the results which counts.

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

I don't ever remember them telling us or teaching us that the only way we could be more successful is if other people were less successful. They never inculcated the belief that somehow, in order for us to climb the ladder, other people have to come down from the ladder.

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

Ability is sexless.

The ability to be successful should be a good thing.

I truly don't know why the boys are getting all the votes - it could be because they are really amazing, and that's all there is to it. They're really, really good and every single boy deserves to be in the competition right now, and so do the two girls.

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.

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

I do not like to put one title above the other. Every competition I contest and win is important.