Quotes from Toby Young

Oddly, I do have a problem with authority. I find it very difficult to knuckle down and follow rules. Which are the classic symptoms of someone who has a troubled relationship with their father. And yet, I never had a problem with my father.

I've become a professional failure - in order to pay the mortgage I have to remain unemployed. Luckily, a disaster always seems to befall me at exactly the right moment.

America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.

In Britain, by contrast, we still think that class plays a part in determining a person's life chances, so we're less inclined to celebrate success and less inclined to condemn failure. The upshot is that it's much easier to be a failure in Britain than it is in America.

Some people are lucky enough to stumble across the right path straight away; most of us only discover what the right one is by going down the wrong one first.

It was journalism at its best: irreverent, mischievous and beholden to no one.

Unbefuckinglievable.

T]he majority possesses an empire so absolute and so irresistible that one must in a way renounce one's rights as a citizen and so to speak one's quality as a man when one wants to deviate from the path it has traced.

Socialism always begins with a universal vision for the brotherhood of man and ends with people having to eat their own pets.

I tried being a mechanic and I tried catering, but I realized I had even less aptitude for semi-skilled labour than for academic work.