Sandi Toksvig Quotes

In Europe, you would almost never have people with large amounts of income being happy with a two-volume vehicle like a hatchback or a minivan. They want to structurally show their societal position, which is why three volumes are so popular. They show 'I'm part of that hierarchy.'

I do like nice things; we do live in a great house, but I don't choose my friends by how much money they have or what labels they're wearing.

Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.

If you're holding your iPhone, and it's the newest iteration of it, you're like, 'Oh, famous people have my phone. Captains of industry have my phone.' And that can be an intoxicating experience for someone who is going off to college for the first time.

We value 'stuff' quite highly. Why? Because that 'stuff' apparently matters. Not only that, we use it as a measure of how successful we are, and as a result of that, having more of this 'stuff' often determines how people treat us.

Pride is what you can afford or think you can afford.

At least being prosperous set one apart in England; here it guaranteed nothing, not even taste.

You can almost judge how screwed up somebody is by the kind of toilet paper they use. Go in any rich house and it's some weird coloured embossed stuff.

False shame accompanies a man that is poor, shame that either harms a man greatly or profits him; shame is with poverty, but confidence with wealth.

Fashion for the most part is nothing but the ostentation of riches.

Class isn't something you buy. Look at you. You have a $500 suit on and you're still a lowlife.

A Rolex watch or an expensive car are the things guys often use to show status, wealth, and basic desirability.

I am not trying to say that I am poor and that I don't like beautiful things. But I don't like luxury for luxury sake or in the sense of showing off luxury.

I don't care what anyone says. Being rich is a good thing.

Culture and possessions, there is the bourgeoisie for you.

There was a time when formal clothes were one of life's great pleasures, as well as a way of describing instantly a man's status wealth. Toffs wore the most, the proles the least. Fast forward to 2008 and clothes are still an unrivalled pleasure but some men - and this includes many of our betters - have confused status with fake informality.

To be thought rich is as good as to be rich.

We judge of entire nations by the productions of a few mechanical arts, and think we are talking of men, while we are boasting of their estates, their dress, and their palaces. The sense in which we apply the terms, great, and noble, high rank, and high life, show, that we have, on such occasions, transferred the idea of perfection from the character to the equipage; and that excellence itself is, in our esteem, a mere pageant, adorned at a great expense, by the labors of many workmen.

Wealth has never been a sufficient source of honour in itself. It must be advertised, and the normal medium is obtrusively expensive.

I always felt like I was kind of an outsider because I didn't have the right things. I didn't have a Cadillac. I didn't have, you know, plastic on my furniture. That was the right way to be if you were Italian.

I didn't buy the Porsche for status. I hate that, and it's actually kind of goofy now because in L.A., a Porsche is like a Honda. It was just that I could pay that much money for a car and drive it off the lot.

Growing up, it was uncool to admit that your family had any money. And then, instantly, money was cool. In Reagan's parlance, it was about freedom of the individual, which was freedom to be greedy... individual versus society. There was a weird seduction in that, which I still feel.

Sovereign money procures a wife with a large fortune, gets a man credit, creates friends, stands in place of pedigree, and even of beauty.

Respectability, n. The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account.

Noble descent and worth, unless united with wealth, are esteemed no more than seaweed.