Toby Young Quotes

What family you were born into matters so much more than it did before in a perverse way.

In the States everyone aspires to be middle class. It's so engrained into the American psyche: As long as you work hard you're going to be rich some day. The history of Britain is that if you're born working class, you're going to stay there, although that is changing.

There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents;... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.

The prime culprit in causing contemporary social inequality seems to be merit.

A meritocracy increases inequality --- by its very nature, it has to.

I don't like class distinction, and there is far too much of that in England.

Working-class people don't tend to be wooed by celebrity.

Class still matters in Britain today.

I don't campaign for the end of the aristocracy or the upper classes; I don't really want to destroy anything at all. I just want more plurality.

And if we don't have a test, what we may end up doing is going back to what this country has done before. We could use social class and we still do, but in the 50s, it was, do you have the right last name and are your parents in privileged positions?

And understand: class differences will not save you.

Yes, look, social class is definitely an issue in Britain, it is definitely an issue and I think that most people across the country would sympathise with the idea that there are lots of people with talent and ability all across this country who want to make more of themselves and part of the responsibility of government is to make that happen.

I just think the whole discussion of class is wrong. It's not what we do here in America. I don't think there's anything called 'middle class values' that are different from the values of other people in this country.

And I am interested in the fact that class is very much a factor in America, even though it's not supposed to be.

Poor people have more fun than rich people, they say; and I notice it's the rich people who keep saying it.

Of course, in the United States, which at the time was a very young country, there were also class distinctions. They weren't as pronounced, but they quickly evolved as well.

My feeling is, having lived in different classes, that people want equality of opportunity... that's the thing that makes me despair: the idea that people aren't given equality of opportunity.

I only knew about daily life. It was said, well, it isn't everybody's daily life. That is why I started.

You never find an Englishman among the under-dogs except in England, of course.

Our democracy may have an aristocracy of talent, as Jefferson said – which is fine – but we don’t want everyone else to be left out. Something like that seems to be happening, though.

On the battlefield, there is no distinction between upper and lower class.

This College system went into practice to draw a line of demarcation between the two classes of society—it separated the children of the rich from the children of the poor.

I am no leveller; I look upon an artificial equality as equally pernicious with a factitious aristocracy; both depressing the energies and checking the enterprise of a nation.

Distinction in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions.

I'm not interested in classes ... Far be it from me to foster inferiority complexes among the workers by trying to make them think they belong to some special class.