Merit quotes
374 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside merit — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Assuredly men of merit are never lacking at any time, for those are the men who manage affairs, and it is affairs that produce the men. I have never searched, and I have always found under my hand the men who have served me, and for the most part I have been well served."
"More glorious to merit a sceptre than to possess one."
"To those critics who see capitalism as a system of inegalitarian, oppressive structures, its defenders have vaunted its ability to recognize and encourage what they call individual merit and asserted not only the desirability but also the inevitability of differential reward, of earned privilege, so to speak."
"Some people displease with merit, and others' very faults and defects are pleasing."
"Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying."
"The more merit, the less affection."
"The sage never seems to know his own merits, for only by not noticing them can you call others' attention to them."
"Can words such as Orthodox, Jew, or Catholic really express some sort of exclusive personal virtues or merits?"
"The sufficiency of my merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient."
"What value is there in faith without works? And what are they worth if they are not united to the merits of Jesus Christ, our only good?"
"Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given."
"Our moral efforts are too feeble and falsely motivated to ever merit salvation."
"No work is of such merit as to instruct from a mere cursory perusal."
"It is human to exaggerate the merits of the dead."
"It is easier to silence scientific dissent by utilizing the politics of personal destruction, than to actually debate them on the merits of their arguments. That should tell you something about the global warming debate...there is none right now....it's either you believe, or you are to be discredited."
"It is not a merit to tolerate, but rather a crime to be intolerant."
"Good birth is a fine thing, but the merit is our ancestors."
"The Spider as an Artist Has never been employed- Though his surpassing Merit Is freely certified."
"The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit."
"Great Modesty often hides great Merit."
