Quotes about Status

It's essentially cleaner to be corrupt and rich than it is to be innocent and poor.

No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.

From natural selection's point of view, status assistance is the main purpose of friendship.

If one function of low self-esteem is to keep high-status people satisfied with your deference, then its level, strictly speaking, should depend on how much deference it takes to do that; you may, in the presence of someone powerful, feel a deeper humility—about your intelligence, for example—than an objective observer would see as warranted.

A married daughter with children puts you in danger of being catalogued as a first edition.

The sport of choice for the urban poor is basketball. The sport of choice for maintenance level employees is bowling. The sport of choice for front-line workers is football. The sport of choice for supervisors is baseball. The sport of choice for middle management is tennis. The sport of choice for corporate officers is golf. Conclusion: The higher you are in the corporate structure, the smaller your balls become.

It is another kind of marriage—the marriage of privilege and duty. It is the aristocrat's explanation and his excuse.

Understand yourself, Piter. You want her because she was a Duke's woman, a symbol of his power—beautiful, useful, exquisitely trained for her role.

Measure your success by the number of people who envy you.

The poor man yields to the rich, the plebeian to the noble, the servant to the master, the unlearned to the learned, and yet every one inwardly cherishes some idea of his own superiority.

In the United States, I am a great success, but I am not a celebrity.

The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction.