social status quotes

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

Money is kind of a base subject. Like water, food, air and housing, it affects everything yet for some reason the world of academics thinks it’s a subject below their social standing.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

Some of these Ivy League kids want to have it both ways. They want to be baby members of the 1 percent, which they most certainly are, and yet still portray themselves as the oppressed.

I was not raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

Affluence means influence.

People like to build their own story about my life. I don’t know if it makes them feel better, or if it makes it okay for them to not like me, but the last thing I grew up as was rich.

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?

My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor.

Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.

I think I’ve committed the one really bad English crime, which is I’ve risen above my station. I was supposed to be a pop star, and suddenly I’m claiming that I’m an artist of some kind.