Ferdinand Mount

“Of course great politicians are always liable to be wrong about something, and the more people tell them they are wrong, the more stubbornly they defend their error.”

“Something is happening to Britain and the British. Or has happened. We are said to be passing through a transition, or a turning point, or a transformation; nobody is quite sure which.”

“The president is being denounced for not taking the kind of pre-emptive action in Afghanistan that he has been so passionately denounced for taking in Iraq. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.”

“One of the unsung freedoms that go with a free press is the freedom not to read it.”

“Defenders of the status quo will argue that this system has served us well over the centuries, that our parliamentary traditions have combined stability and flexibility and that we should not cast away in a minute what has taken generations to build.”

“What the world needs now is more Americans. The U.S. is the first nation on earth deliberately dedicated to letting people choose what they want and giving them a chance to get it.”

“We want a system that will improve consistency and steadiness in the quality of government.”

“It's true that I'm taking a break from writing a regular column to do other things but it's got nothing to do with what dear Simon has or has not written.”

“Sexual relations, of course, have existed, exist, and will exist. However, this is in no way connected with the indispensability of the existence of the family.”

“We criticize, copy, patronize, idolize and insult but we never doubt that the U.S. has a unique position in the history of human hopes.”

“I think it's a pity that in many people's minds constitutional reform and PR have come to mean much the same thing.”

“A majority in all parties do, I think, want to see local government recover its old vigour and independence.”

“For all its terrible faults, in one sense America is still the last, best hope of mankind, because it spells out so vividly the kind of happiness that most people actually want, regardless of what they are told they ought to want.”

“In real terms, there is a greater disparity of earnings between the very rich and the very poor.”

“America slept because most Americans preferred it that way.”

“All the research shows that being married, with all its ups and downs, is by far the most effective way of making young men law-abiding and giving them a sense of purpose and self-worth.”

“We are also further than ever from equality of opportunity.”

“According to Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, Bush was so obsessed with Iraq that he failed to take action against Osama Bin Laden despite repeated warnings from his intelligence experts.”

“The irreducible, ultimate element in religious faith is the insistence that we are created things; male and female He created them; without God we are nothing. And yet, when men and women have children and become parents, they unmistakably become creators, incompetent, accidental and partial creators, no doubt, but creators none the less. It is their inescapable duty, and, with luck, their occasional delight to care and watch over their creations; even if this creative power is partly illusory because chromosomes and chance decide the whole business, parents cannot act as if it is illusory; they cannot sincerely believe in their ultimate helplessness. They must behave like shepherds, however clumsy, and not like sheep, however well trained.The Sermon on the Mount is a wonderful, intoxicating sermon. But it is a sermon for bachelors.”

“No constitution is or can be perfectly symmetrical, what it can and must be is generally accepted as both fair and usable.”