Adrian Wooldridge > Quotes

“Peter Drucker once noted that “no institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under the leadership of perfectly normal human beings.” Warren Buffet made the same point more pithily: “I only invest in companies which any fool can run, because some day some fool will run it.”
― Adrian Wooldridge, Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and Their Ideas Have Changed the World—for Better and for Worse

“In meritocratic society, people are individuals before they are anything else: masters of their fates and captains of their souls.32”
― Adrian Wooldridge, The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World

“Один зі способів зрозуміти нещодавню історію — уявити собі чергу по каву: уранці ви йдете до «Старбаксу», відчайдушно потребуючи чашки звичайної кави, перш ніж почнете класти цеглу, а тим часом молода особа в костюмі для йоги від Lulu Lemon влізає перед вами без черги і замовляє лате без піни зі знежиреним мигдалевим молоком — на двадцять осіб. Потім ця людина, яка влізла без черги, обертається до вас і починає читати вам лекцію про те, який ви сексист, агресивний «расист, котрому, перш ніж висловлюватися, варто згадати про свої привілеї.”
― Adrian Wooldridge, The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World

“They can also sell the same products in different ways to different groups of consumers (Britain’s Viz magazine, with its fat slags and foul-mouthed yobs, is sold as a comic magazine in the south of the country but as an upmarket style guide in the north).”
― Adrian Wooldridge, Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and Their Ideas Have Changed the World—for Better and for Worse

“The Communist Party also claims that it is trying to promote political meritocracy: that is, a political system that aims to select and promote leaders on the basis of talents rather than on the basis of how many votes they can muster in an election.”
― Adrian Wooldridge, The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World

“but they agreed on one thing at least: that there is an inverse relationship between being well turned out and having something to say. Rand talked about people whose careers “depend on keeping faces bland, remarks inconclusive and clothes immaculate”.”
― Adrian Wooldridge

“The past four decades have seen one of the most depressing developments in the history of the meritocratic idea: the marriage between merit and money.”
― Adrian Wooldridge, The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World

“The French Revolution was dedicated to the principle of ‘a career open to talents’. The American Revolution advanced the idea that people should be allowed to pursue life, liberty and happiness without being held back by feudal restrictions. The Industrial Revolution unleashed animal spirits. The liberal revolution, which was headquartered in Britain but influential across middle-class Europe, introduced open competition into the heart of government administrations and educational systems.”
― Adrian Wooldridge, The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World