Daily Inspiration Quote by Kenneth L. Pike

Respectability is the social currency everyone claims to disdain until it’s handed out. Pike’s line lands because it treats “respectability” not as a personal virtue but as an external credential, something “granted” by a group with the power to confer legitimacy. The phrase quietly shifts the locus of control: you don’t simply become respectable; you are recognized as such. That recognition is never neutral. It’s a gate, and there’s always a gatekeeper.

His hedging - “I would guess” - is doing sociological work. It signals an empirical caution while still smuggling in a strong claim about universals. He’s not romanticizing cultural difference; he’s pointing to a shared human vulnerability: status dependence. Even in societies that prize egalitarianism, people still want the kind of respect that arrives publicly, not just privately felt. The subtext is that social order runs on symbolic rewards as much as on laws or economics. If people “value” respectability, they will trade for it: conform, self-censor, perform, distance themselves from the stigmatized.

Contextually, Pike’s career sits near mid-century social science when scholars were obsessed with patterns that travel across cultures - emic/etic distinctions, norms, face, and role behavior. Read that way, the quote is less about manners than about governance. Respectability becomes a soft technology of control: societies distribute honor to stabilize behavior without constant coercion. The sting is implicit: if respectability is granted, it can be withheld. And the threat of withdrawal is often enough to keep people in line.