Meritocracy Failure Quotes

Politics is the art of achieving power and prestige without merit.

It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture- race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions.

Ambitious men spend their youth in rendering themselves worthy of patronage; it is their great mistake. While the foolish creatures are laying in stores of knowledge and energy, so that they shall not sink under the weight of responsible posts that recede from them, schemers come and go who are wealthy in words and destitute of ideas, astonish the ignorant, and creep into the confidence of those who have a little knowledge.

Your hard work and talent will not pay off.

It is always those with little learning that overthrow those with much learning.

In such a government as ours no man is appointed to an office because he is the fittest for it--nor hardly in any other government--because there are so many connections and dependencies to be studied.

Politicians only get to the top because they have no qualifications to detain them at the bottom.

Preferment goes by letter and affection, And not by old gradation, where each second Stood heir to th's first.

There's tons of people with talent; it's the system that's all screwed up.

All the historians are Harvard people. It just isn't fair. Poor old Hoover from West Branch, Iowa, had no chance with that crowd;nor did Andrew Jackson from Tennessee. Nor does Lyndon Johnson from Stonewall, Texas. It just isn't fair.

Social class has worked for years. Born into the right family, go to the right schools, even if you're not super bright to start with, you'll turn out bright. You go to the right university, you get the right job, you have the right connections, you'll make it to the top. Job done, very efficient.

Somehow life doesn't always pay off to those who are most insistent.

Now the guy that got to the top, the CEO, would obviously be stupid to have a number two guy who was a lot smarter than he is. So by definition, since he's a survivor and he got to the top and he isn't that brilliant, his number two guy is going to always be a little worse than he is. So, as time goes on, it's anti-Darwinism, the survival of the un- fittest.

I know a lot of really good actors - tons, just tons - who I still don't know why they don't work all the time because they're that good. It's just a weird business, and I know a lot of actors who shouldn't be working, but they work all the time.

Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

I worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they're good talkers, but they don't have good ideas. It's so easy to confuse schmoozing ability with talent. Someone seems like a good presenter, easy to get along with, and those traits are rewarded. Well, why is that? They're valuable traits, but we put too much of a premium on presenting and not enough on substance and critical thinking.

Ability and fitness for the office, where they exist, are as a rule, purely accidental. The selection is made primarily to strengthen the power of the party. This explains the principle by which appointments are parceled out to meet the alleged claims of particular political districts; it also explains the even more vicious principle by which race, nationality and creed often dictate the selection of Magistrates.

On the evidence we have, the meritocratic ideal ends up being just as undemocratic as the old emphasis on inheritance and tradition, and it forges an elite that has an aristocracy's vices (privilege, insularity, arrogance) without the sense of duty, self-restraint and noblesse oblige that WASPs at their best displayed.

You could be disqualified for a job [at Harvard] if you were either smart or Jewish or Keynesian. So what chance did this smart, Jewish, Keynesian have?

Why talk of the team when our Cricket Board is like an exclusive club with members being there for years on end? If they can stay on without performing, the players too feel they can stay in the team without too big a performance.

The most talented do not always end up as celebrities, and those with less talent often do. Upsets are written into our history and occur around us every day.

How many people didn't get a part who would have been better than the person who got the part? Thousands.

If you are well known at something else, you get points for doing stuff which lots of other people do, and much more, and they don't get any points at all. You get over-praised, over-credited.

Maybe libertarians especially like Reddit because it is a perfect marketplace of content. Every Redditor is created equal, whether you're the highest karma Redditor or a brand-new Redditor with 10 karma points. No submissions or votes are more equal than others.

Reputation runs in a vicious circle, and Merit limps behind it, mortified and abashed at its own insignificance