Sir William Robert Ferdinand Mount, 3rd Baronet, FRSL (born 2 July 1939), is a British writer, novelist and columnist for The Sunday Times as well as a political commentator.
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.
America slept because most Americans preferred it that way.
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.
If life was what you made of it, then it could not be made for you.
One of the unsung freedoms that go with a free press is the freedom not to read it.
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.
We are also further than ever from equality of opportunity.
A majority in all parties do, I think, want to see local government recover its old vigour and independence.
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.
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.
In real terms, there is a greater disparity of earnings between the very rich and the very poor.
No constitution is or can be perfectly symmetrical, what it can and must be is generally accepted as both fair and usable.
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.
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.