Pierre Omidyar Quotes

It's not a meritocracy until everyone starts with the same opportunities, is it?

I don't think anybody can claim success at any part of our lives, private or professional, if there are others that don't enjoy the same opportunities.

Everyone should have the same opportunity, and in many areas that's not the case because programs are built around the elite.

Equal opportunity for all, special privilege for none.

All inequality that has no special utility to justify it is injustice.

You are exacerbating inequality rather than opening up opportunity.

We must restore the emotional relationship that people have to the idea of America, that no matter where you come from, no matter where you live, that you have access to the same opportunities that somebody who is born in privilege.

That's what liberalism is all about, is promoting incompetence on the basis it's fair, because people would be the best if they weren't discriminated against.

Now we Democrats believe that America is still the country of fair play, that we can come out of a small town or a poor neighborhood and have the same chance as anyone else, and it doesn't matter whether we are black or Hispanic, or disabled or women.

My feeling is, having lived in different classes, that people want equality of opportunity... that's the thing that makes me despair: the idea that people aren't given equality of opportunity.

Sama means 'equal' in Sanskrit; I chose 'Samasource' because I thought it really reflected a value that I had and that I wanted the company to have, which is that everyone has equal capabilities and deserves an equal chance.

Conservatives often say that we should care not about equality of outcomes but about equality of opportunity.

If the spirit of equality means anything, it means like opportunity, and if we once lose like opportunity, we lose the only chance we have toward equality throughout the nation.

To unequal privileges among members of the same society the spirit of our nation is, with one accord, adverse.

To be prosperous is not to be superior, and should form no barrier between men. Wealth ought not to secure the prosperous the slightest consideration.

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions — it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

We are building a country where a person's prospects are determined by their own initiative and hard work and not by the color of their skin, place of birth, gender, language, or income of their parents.

I think this country is genuinely a meritocracy.

I would love to live in a world that is purely equal, where everyone has equal opportunities in every way. But that is not reality.

If you have the talent, you should have the opportunity.

I hate the unfairness of injustice. Anybody who thinks they are better than others or 'chosen' or feel they have an entitlement... be it through monarchy, government or money. I think we are all born the same. We are entitled to an equal shot at life.

Anyone can achieve it if they're given the opportunity to.

If we try to engineer outcomes, if we overturn tradition to make everyone the same, we ruin society. If we upset tradition to allow for an equal shot at the starting gate, everyone wins, except for the charlatans and would be dictators.

I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy - I don't disparage envy, but I don't accept it as legitimately my master.

We are also further than ever from equality of opportunity.