Careerism Quotes

“But in the military you don't get trusted positions just because of your ability. You also have to attract the notice of superior officers. You have to be liked. You have to fit in with the system. You have to look like what the officers above you think that officers should look like. You have to think in ways that they are comfortable with.

The result was that you ended up with a command structure that was top-heavy with guys who looked good in uniform and talked right and did well enough not to embarrass themselves, while the really good ones quietly did all the serious work and bailed out their superiors and got blamed for errors they had advised against until they eventually got out.

That was the military.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“The term propaganda rings melodramatic and exaggerated, but a press that—whether from fear, careerism, or conviction—uncritically recites false government claims and reports them as fact, or treats elected officials with a reverence reserved for royalty, cannot be accurately described as engaged in any other function.”
― Glenn Greenwald, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency

“Get into Parliament, make tiresome speeches; you will have great offers; do not accept them at first, then do: then make great provision for yourself and family, and then call yourself an independent country gentleman.”
― Hans Stanley

“Young people cannot contribute to the betterment of society if they are
constantly focusing on how to improve their own position.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“The best philosophers were not academics, but had another job, so their philosophy was not corrupted by careerism.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“From what the Oxford scholar [TE Lawrence] had seen, military culture was a world of hidebound careerists looking for a knighthood or their next medal, and of underlings loath to question the powerful, with countless thousands dying as a result.”
― Scott Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East

“Downward social mobility.
We hear a lot about the great social mobility in America with the focus usually on the comparative ease of moving upwards.

What's less discussed is how easy it is to go down. I think that's the direction that we're all heading in. And I think that the downward fall is gonna be very fast.

Not just for us as individuals, but the whole preppy class.

Just look around. Take those of our fathers who grew up very well off.

Maybe their careers started out well enough but just as their contemporaries really began to accomplish things, they started to quit, or rising above office politics, or refusing to compete and risk open failure.

Or not doing the humdrum part of the job. Or only doing the humdrum part.

Or gradually spending more and more time on something more interesting — conservation, or the arts — where even if they were total failures no one would know it.”
― Whit Stillman, Metropolitan: A Novella and Three Stories