Success Quote by Charles Buxton

Meritocracy hates this line because it implies the world rarely runs on merit. Buxton, a Victorian public servant, isn’t tossing off a motivational poster; he’s offering an administrative truth learned in the machinery of committees, patronage, and reform. “Experience shows” is the key move: not “I believe,” not “it should be,” but the dry authority of observation. He’s telling you what actually survives contact with institutions.

The contrast between “ability” and “zeal” is a quiet indictment. Ability is private capital: intelligence, skill, talent. Zeal is public force: the willingness to push, petition, repeat yourself, outlast resistance, recruit allies, and make your priorities everyone else’s problem. In bureaucratic and political ecosystems, zeal is easier to measure and harder to ignore. It fills forms, knocks on doors, convenes meetings, and keeps showing up when the gifted person gets bored, picky, or discouraged.

Subtext: success is often a function of stamina and social energy more than brilliance. Buxton is also reassuring the merely competent (and warning the merely talented): the game rewards those who can convert conviction into motion. In the mid-19th century, Britain was modernizing its civil service and public life, but it was still an era where networks, moral crusades, and persistent lobbying could outweigh pure expertise. Zeal, for better or worse, is the engine of reform and the fuel of careerism. Buxton’s line is a compliment to effort with a side-eye at the systems that mistake loud persistence for worth.