“Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper.”
Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 1
Context: Keeping up with the Joneses was a full-time job with my mother and father. It was not until many years later when I lived alone that I realized how much cheaper it was to drag the Joneses down to my level.
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Quentin Crisp 66
writer, Actor 1908–1999Related quotes

Angels http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3r701k2dx8
Life Is Worth Living (1951–1957)

Variant: Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

“A drawing is always dragged down to the level of its caption.”
The New Yorker (2 August 1930)
From other writings

"An Introduction", The Fireside Book of Dog Stories (Simon and Schuster, 1943); reprinted in Thurber's Dogs (1955)
From other writings

1763
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

(10 January 2005)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2005
Context: The writing of a novel or short story or poem or whatever should elevate the audience, not drag the writer down to some level beneath herself. And she — the author — should fight always to prevent that dragging down, especially when the only possible benefit of allowing it to happen is monetary.

“There is no escape — man drags man down, or man lifts man up.”
As quoted in The Great Quotations (1971) edited by George Seldes, p. 366