Peter Jones Quotes

Opulence is a crime

My kids get everything they want and are raised well.

If you start to find that kind of luxury as a normal thing, you don't belong in the real world.

The current public aspiration seems to be: Get what you can. Can what you get. Sit on the can behind gated fences.

They say that if you give your children too much, they don't get the joy out of work. They just want the unearned things to keep falling from the sky.

Many people in the western world are spoiled by the conveniences of our culture.

Many people have beautiful homes and beautiful things, but other people haven't ever seen them. So why have them?

My kids are the offspring of people who are doing reasonably well and live in the centre of London and the chances are they're going to turn out ghastly anyway. Who's to say they shouldn't have a walk-in wardrobe and possibly a stylist from the age of four?

Ignorance is degrading only when found in company with great riches.

What is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.

I was kind of a loser at ballet school. It's all rich kids, and I was not a wealthy kid. I didn't have the Chanel butterfly clip everyone else did.

The affluent society makes no meaningful distinction between luxury and necessity.

If the Almighty had ever made a set of men that should do all the eating and none of the work, He would have made them with mouths only and no hands.

one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.

…luxury is the result of wealth, or it makes wealth necessary. It corrupts both rich and poor, the one by possessing, the other by coveting. It sells out the fatherland to indolence and vanity; it deprives the State of all its Citizens by enslaving some of them to others and all of them to opinion.

In the affluent society no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessaries.

I always thought it is a bit of a balloon, how rich we are.

Flip-flops are a privilege, not a right.

That's mind-blowing to me that people would say that because you have nice things, you're soft. No, you're soft because your culture is soft.

There was a commonality in a lot of the private school experiences that I had of children whose lives were not their own. They thought they were their own, but they were essentially gifted this life by their parents. So they were spending money; they were going on trips - I guess, in a way, it is their life, but they didn't earn it.

Anybody that lives in America and has parents with a moderate amount of wealth can be spoiled. I see it every day - kids who are just running their parents over to get what they want because kids are smart, and they know they can manipulate their parents.

The people who are the most powerful and have the most money sometimes don't value other people.

I like nice things. I've always had nice things.

There were times when we didn't have hot water or a phone line. But I guarantee you, we always had cable, and it was always on.

I've always been less interested in the person on the top of the Bellagio than I am at the person whose house got moved to create the Bellagio.