The Haves and the Haven'ts

The Haves and the Haven'ts is Sancho Panza’s earthy label for the division between people who possess wealth and those who do not. He invokes it while weighing Basilio’s accomplishments against Camacho’s resources, making the phrase both a comic defense of his own appetite and a pointed comment on how material advantage shapes social preference.

The Saying and Its Occasion

Sancho introduces the expression during the celebration surrounding Camacho’s wedding. After hearing a dance that represents the contest between Love and its supporters, on one side, and Wealth and its supporters, on the other, he declares his allegiance to Camacho. Don Quixote calls him a clown who sides with the victor; Sancho answers that he would rather have the plentiful fare from Camacho’s pots than Basilio’s accomplishments. He displays a bucketful of geese and hens and begins eating as he makes his case.

The saying is presented as something Sancho learned from his grandmother: there are only two families in the world, the Haves and the Haven'ts, and she chose the Haves. Sancho extends the contrast beyond the wedding feast, arguing that people would rather assess someone’s possession than their knowledge. His comparison of a gold-covered ass with a horse carrying a pack-saddle gives the thought its familiar comic bluntness: outward prosperity can count for more than refinement or ability.

Wealth, Knowledge, and Social Position

Sancho’s preference is not simply an abstract defense of riches. In the scene, he measures the difference through what is immediately available: Camacho’s food is before him, while Basilio’s future prospects are uncertain. His grandmother’s maxim turns that practical choice into a general rule about social life, in which material possession affects how people are valued. Don Quixote’s rebuke exposes Sancho’s lack of decorum, but Sancho’s attention to the meal keeps the proverb grounded in tangible circumstances rather than ideals.

Elsewhere, Sancho’s hopes of rising in rank reveal another side of the same social order. He says that being an Old Christian is enough to qualify him to become a count; Don Quixote replies that, as king, he could make Sancho a gentleman without requiring either payment or service. The exchange treats lineage, royal favor, and wealth as distinct routes to status. Sancho’s saying compresses that hierarchy into its most practical division: those who have, and those who have not.

Wider Resonances

Dorothea’s account of her family offers a contrasting example of wealth changing social standing. Her parents are prosperous peasants whose riches and generous way of life have gradually led others to regard them as gentlefolk, though she remains acutely aware of the difference between their birth and that of Don Fernando. Her story shows that possession can improve a family’s position without erasing distinctions of origin or protecting its members from the power attached to noble rank. Set beside Sancho’s proverb, it makes the divide between Haves and Haven'ts part of a larger, unstable scale of wealth, birth, honor, and influence.

The phrase also resonates with the book’s reflection on families whose former distinction has dwindled over generations. The narrator notes that Cervantes’s own ancestry gives particular force to the image of once-great families tapering away like a pyramid. That observation does not explain Sancho’s saying, but it places the proverb’s focus on possession within a work attentive to the rise and decline of family standing. Sancho makes the distinction comic and immediate; the surrounding stories show how wealth and inherited rank can overlap without becoming the same thing.