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.
Leaders are judged on merit and not on caste or family names.
It's possible to fund companies for $100,000 and find out rather quickly whether or not the idea they are pursuing has merit. Scientists now work much faster.
Go fail or succeed on your own merits, be your own man.
At the end of the day all I've ever asked for is to be allowed to succeed and fail on my own merits. Not based on what somebody else wants me to do or thinks I should do. Or, what they want me to say or what they think I should say.
'You, too, can be the President,' every American kid is told. But one unintended consequence of this belief, it is that, as a result of our being a meritocracy, if you have not succeeded, you are of lesser merit. It is shameful to be a failure in this country.
When you are proud of something you have done, and you have made a film you feel has merit, and it's found an audience and is critically well received, that's a pretty pleasurable place to be. I mean, you don't want it gathering dust at the bottom of someone's DVD collection.
Those from whose pocket the salary is drawn, and by whose appointment the officer was made, have always a right to discuss the merits of their officers, and their modes of exercising the duties they are paid to perform.
If literary terms were about artistic merit and not the rules of convenience, about achievement and not safety, the term 'realism' would be an honorary one, conferred only on work that actually builds unsentimental reality on the page, that matches the complexity of life with an equally rich arrangement in language.
If you are going into any manufacturing establishment, don't go there by reason of any influence you may have. Start upon your own merits, and start in some lowly position, no matter what it is. Be a laborer, if you will. I don't know but that is the best way to start.
