Merit Quotes

Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun, and I think I'm sort of building up to doing something else quite soon.

I urge the enactment of a civil service law so explicit and so strong that no partisan official will dare evade it, basing all rewards, promotions and salaries solely on merit, on loyalty and industry in the public service.

Merit, however inconsiderable, should be sought for and rewarded. Methods are the master of masters.

If you are looking for smart judging based on merit, skip the Academy Awards next year and pay attention to the Independent Spirit Awards.

Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

Consider the Essay as a political pamphlet on the Revolution side, and the fact that it was the Whig gospel for a century, and you will see its working merit.

In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.

Evidently the merit depends on the result of the work.

Neither soldiers nor money can defend a king but only friends won by good deeds, merit, and honesty.

Mr. Lincoln's elevation shows that in America every station in life may be honorable; that there is no barrier against the humblest; but that merit, wherever it exists, has the opportunity to be known.

In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.

The merit of a democratic regime rests on one's continual willingness to exchange views, and to compete on the basis of individual merit and capacities.

Nothing in medicine is so insignificant as to merit attention.

Men sometimes feel injured by praise because it assigns a limit to their merit; few people are modest enough not to take offense that one appreciates them.

The market system requires that people be committed and willing to work hard. Inherent with that is what I call a merit system, which I think gives people the greatest opportunity.

The merit of our Constitution was, not that it promotes democracy, but checks it.

People that are conceited of their own merit take pride in being unfortunate, that themselves and others may think them considerable enough to be the envy and the mark of fortune.

It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit.

I just keep it simple. Watch the ball and play it on merit.

Now an infinite happiness cannot be purchased by any price less than that which is infinite in value; and infinity of merit can only result from a nature that is infinitely divine or perfect.

Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.

Her great merit is finding out mine - there is nothing so amiable as discernment.

A young man, be his merit what it will, can never raise himself; but must, like the ivy round the oak, twine himself round some man of great power and interest.

Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity.

Should slavery be abolished there, (and it is an event, which, from these circumstances, we may reasonably expect to be produced in time) let it be remembered, that the Quakers will have had the merit of its abolition.

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

So that's why one of my rules of parody writing is that it's gotta be funny regardless of whether you know the source material. It has to work on its own merit.

A necessary consequent of religious belief is the attaching ideas of merit to that belief, and of demerit to its absence.