Nicolas Chamfort Quotes

Titles of honor are like the impressions on coins, which add no value to gold or silver, but only render brass current.

Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.

There's an unspoken rule in affluent circles that suggests you can always define an individual's status by measuring his or her proximity to the most influential person in the room. And as the maxim goes, closer is always better.

It's true; I'm fascinated by elite groups.

Authority doesn't work without prestige, or prestige without distance.

Language does not make one an elite.

The parson knows enough who knows a Duke.

Reputation is only a candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.

Hollywood is a very small world; the people who matter matter, and the people who don't matter are just like nothing.

It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

I don't believe in social equality, and they know it.

Class is more than money. Class is also about knowledge.

People who study primate societies make a distinction between two kinds of cultural interactions, agonic and hedonic. In agonic societies, you gain status by asserting dominance over others. In hedonic societies, you gain status by drawing attention to yourself. Open source is a hedonic culture.

It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.

Rank does not intimidate hardware. Neither does the lack of rank.

A court is an assembly of noble and distinguished beggars.

Class is more important than a game.

Aristocracy is naturally abhorrent to me, and adored equality is my idol.

Reputation runs in a vicious circle, and Merit limps behind it, mortified and abashed at its own insignificance

There is no distinction of persons among them, and deference is shown to merit rather than to noble blood.

Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order.

In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.

For titles do not reflect honor on men, but rather men on their titles.

Kings need the company of the intelligent far more than the intelligent need the company of kings.

All Society therefore is either for Gain, or for Glory; (i.e.) not so much for love of our Fellowes