John Passmore - The perfectibility of man (1970)

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In the interests of the ideal of maximum output, [our society] judges men by their fitness for jobs, not jobs by their fitness for men.

John Passmore

If humility means nothing more than the capacity to learn from criticism, then it has an undoubted value; but if humility means a willingness to submit to authority—to abandon or to modify what one is doing merely because it does not accord with the teachings of the Bible or the thoughts of Chairman Mao—then it is death to the spirit: the proper name for it, indeed, is servility.

John Passmore

That is why classical Utopias, and the modern dystopias which ironically incorporate their ideals, are static. … The technically expert citizen is expert only in his allotted task; for him to think about the value of that task is for him to pass completely beyond the limits of what is permissible.

John Passmore