Social Distinction Quotes

Since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness and other accomplishments, has become but an auxiliary ground of distinction.

Listen, my friend, there are two races of beings. The masses teeming and happy - common clay, if you like - eating, breeding, working, counting their pennies; people who just live; ordinary people; people you can't imagine dead. And then there are the others - the noble ones, the heroes. The ones you can quite well imagine lying shot, pale and tragic; one minute triumphant with a guard of honor, and the next being marched away between two gendarmes

Rules of taste enforce structures of power.

it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than thesquarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings; mostpeople are snobs.

When I was fourteen and first started going out, I always wanted to be the opposite of everyone else. So I would go to the club in a polo T-shirt and pants and sneakers and a hat on backward, just so I would not be dressed like other girls.

Property is desirable as the ground work of moral independence, as a means of improving the faculties, and of doing good to others, and as the agent in all that distinguishes the civilized man from the savage.

I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love animates the behaviour.

It is only when it takes the form of physical addiction that sex is evil. It is also evil when it manifests itself as a way of satisfying the lust for power or the climber's craving for position and social distinction.

There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.

I don't talk to the groupies. I talk to nice, upstanding women. The groupies don't get my attention. It's the women that I like.

People always say "pop culture." As if we have some high culture to distinguish it from.

It is terribly important to do certain things, such as wear overembroidered dresses. After all, the mass follows class. Class never follows mass.

The State is only one of the forms assumed by society in the course of history. Why then make no distinction between what is permanent and what is accidental?

This whole segregation between famous people and other people is complete rubbish.

It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction.

Sex is the great leveler, taste the great divider.

This has become a bugbear of mine: the difference between geek and nerd.

she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.

I had my group of friends, you know, like my real group of friends, and then I had, like, party friends.

I feel like I enjoy the company of Whoopi deeply, and my private life is my private life.

I remember the first time I heard a co-worker refer to himself as a foodie. It immediately irritated me. Was he implying that he appreciated food more than other people? That his love of eating was somehow more evolved than mine? Don't all people love the thing we can't live without?

We are delighted to find a person who values us as we value ourselves, and distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike that with which we distinguish ourselves.

No precedence ... of anyone over another, exists in right or practice, at dinners, assemblies, or any other occasions. 'Pell-mell' and 'next the door' for the basis of etiquette in the societies of this country.

The skateboarders are snobbier - their look is much cleaner than ravers'.

Gentlemen cherish worth; the vulgar cherish dirt. Gentlemen trust in justice; the vulgar trust in favor.