{"quotes":[{"text":"People always knock what's new but I love the modern Internet, where cleverness is currency. Social media is a cleverness meritocracy. We're living in it.","author":"Alexei Maxim Russell","tags":["clever","cleverness","currency","future","internet","internet-marketing","marketing","marketing","merit","meritocracy","modern","modern-life","modern-society","social-media"],"id":11212,"author_id":"Alexei+Maxim+Russell"},{"text":"The average Harvard freshman in 1952 would have placed in the bottom 10 percent of the incoming class by 1960.","author":"Charles Murray","tags":["competition","culture","meritocracy","middle-class","stratification"],"id":45419,"author_id":"Charles+Murray"},{"text":"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.","author":"Christopher L. Hayes","tags":["equality","inequality","meritocracy","social-solidarity"],"id":87105,"author_id":"Christopher+L.+Hayes"},{"text":"And if an increasingly pluralistic America ever decides to commission a new motto, I’m open for business, because I’ve got a better one than E pluribus unum. Tu dormis, tu perdis . . . You snooze, you lose.","author":"Paul Beatty","tags":["america","meritocracy","satire"],"id":213166,"author_id":"Paul+Beatty"},{"text":"If someone's deeds lower his position, his pedigree cannot elevate it.","author":"Ali ibn Abi Talib","tags":["justice","meritocracy","wisdom"],"id":248952,"author_id":"Ali+ibn+Abi+Talib"},{"text":"Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.","author":"Chinua Achebe","tags":["achievement","meritocracy"],"id":269298,"author_id":"Chinua+Achebe"},{"text":"With a blade at your throat, a well-connected uncle or a wealthy mother could not save you. Only you could save yourself.","author":"Natalia Marx","tags":["equality","fantasy","meritocracy","nepotism","warrior"],"id":276767,"author_id":"Natalia+Marx"},{"text":"Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you?' He answered, 'Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one.","author":"Ayn Rand","tags":["ability","aristocracy","birthright","meritocracy","nobility","talent"],"id":308934,"author_id":"Ayn+Rand"},{"text":"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.","author":"Christopher L. Hayes","tags":["inequality","injustice","meritocracy"],"id":358238,"author_id":"Christopher+L.+Hayes"},{"text":"Where the establishment emphasized humility, prudence, lineage, meritocracy celebrates ambition, achievement, brains\u0026self-betterment.","author":"Christopher Hayes","tags":["advancement","class","competition","culture","meritocracy","noblesse-oblige"],"id":359370,"author_id":"Christopher+Hayes"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":18,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}