Quotes About Status

Social climbers are like ghosts. Scarey and transparent at the same time.

Privileged men showed off their status by keeping their womenfolk out of public life and hidden from view in the private quarters of their households. The psychology underlying this custom was (I think) the feeling that a man's honor—which really means his ability to hold his head high among his fellow men—depended on his ability to keep any women associated with him from becoming the objects of other men's sexual fantasies.

Zoe wasn't his partner, she was his trophy, and the thing about trophies is that they got old fast and, soon enough, you needed another conquest and another trophy on the shelf.

Given the Beemer's Brahminical status at the top of India's vehicular caste system (bicyclists being the Dalits of the road), few cars dared to cut in front of it or venture too close lest they contaminate its uncorrupted, venerated bodywork.

Money buys a whole lot more than food, clothing, and shelter. It's the power symbol of society. Money buys freedom, possessions, status, access, opportunities, experiences, and more choices. How

If humanity is the central fact of the universe, if our species is the omphalos, then a close examination of the celestial sphere should confirm that privileged status. Our solar system should be the fixed point against which all else is moving; our Sun should be at absolute rest. If the evidence doesn't support that premise, then we must ask where our commitment truly lies.

The very idea of marriage is basic to recognition as equals in our society any status short of that is inferior, unjust, and unconstitutional.

Life is a game. Money is how we keep score.

In what purports to be an egalitarian society, the existence of class is the secret about which no one speaks.

Notwithstanding the supposed egalitarian ethos of some hunter-gatherer societies, humans are a hierarchical social species. We care greatly about where we stand in comparison to some relevant reference group.

'The more expensive the better' is kind of the American way, and if you spent $600 for a sweatshirt, then that makes it better.

The best by far is to marry in one's own rank.

Remember it is as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.

For I have dipped my hands in muddied waters, and, withdrawing them, find 'tis better to be a commander than a common man!

As soon as you set foot on a yacht you belong to some man, not to yourself, and you die of boredom.

Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.

Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.

Balls are to men what purses are to women.

I sometimes think that rich men belong to another nationality entirely, no matter what their actual nationality happens to be. The nationality of the rich.

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

A snob is that man or woman who is always pretending to be something better--especially richer or more fashionable--than he is.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

All men seek esteem; the best by lifting themselves, which is hard to do, the rest by shoving others down, which is much easier.