José Oroño

“Meritocracy may seem a very contemporary idea, but, as Raymond Williams argued in a book review in 1958, the ladder is a perfect symbol of the bourgeois idea of society, for, while it undoubtedly offers the opportunity to climb, ‘it is a device that can only be used individually; you go up the ladder alone’. Such an ‘alternative to solidarity’, pointed out Williams, has dazzled many working-class leaders and is objectionable in two respects: firstly, it weakens community and the task of common betterment; and secondly, it ‘sweetens the poison of hierarchy’ by offering advancement through merit rather than money or birth, whilst retaining a commitment to the very notion of hierarchy itself (Williams 1958: 331).”
― Jo Littler, Against Meritocracy: Culture, power and myths of mobility

“The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of noteworthy kind. They are dependent upon each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is—insofar as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, however, cannot afford to carry his striving for epistemological systematic that far. He accepts gratefully the epistemological conceptual analysis; but the external conditions, which are set for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him to let himself be too much restricted in the construction of his conceptual world by the adherence to an epistemological system. He therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist insofar as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from what is empirically given); as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sensory experiences. He may even appear as Platonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research. (Einstein 1949, 683–684)”
― Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes

“Anyone thus forced to react continually to precepts that are not the expressions of his impulses lives, psychologically speaking, above his means, and may be objectively described as a hypocrite, whether he is clearly conscious of this difference or not. It is undeniable that our contemporary civilization favors this sort of hypocrisy to an extraordinary extent. One might even venture to assert that it is built upon such a hypocrisy and would have to undergo extensive changes if man were to undertake to live according to the psychological truth. There are therefore more civilized hypocrites than truly cultured persons”
― Sigmund Freud, Reflections on War and Death

“L'instabilité des choses a pour corrélat l'impuissance de l'homme.”
― Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological