Not surprisingly, troubled economic times often beget proselytizers of wacky, extreme ideas.

Indias rigid social structure limits intergenerational economic mobility and fosters acceptance of vast wealth disparities.

Thanks to decades of accumulated federal budget deficits and, more significantly, imprudent Medicare and Social Security policies, we've stolen almost $60 trillion from our children.

The weak economy, widening income inequality, gridlock in Congress and a presidential election: Those were perhaps the dominant economic and political themes of 2012.

The highest-income Americans don't need tax-free health insurance, mortgage interest deductions or deferred taxation on retirement funds.

Conservatives brayed that government should stay out of the private sector; liberals bleated for nationalizing the banks.

China has lunged into the 21st century, while India is still lurching toward it.

Most troublesome is the legalization of 'crowd funding,' the ability of start-up companies to raise capital from small investors on the Internet.

The largest number of jobs likely to be created by the JOBS Act will be for lawyers needed to clean up the mess that it will create.

Visits to crowded Indian urban centers unleash sensory assaults: colorful dress and lilting chatter provide a backdrop to every manner of commerce, from small shops to peddlers to beggars.

Conformity runs rampant through everyday life, and people want to read about characters that deviate from societal norms.

One needs to pursue some sort of a creative interest in order to keep life from eating us alive.

'The Sopranos' is filled with really retrograde humor. Bathroom humor, falls, stupid puns, bad jokes - infantile, adolescent stuff, but it makes me laugh.

How do I get it made? How do I get it seen? How do I get it in front of the people I want to serve?

What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles.

I'm not born here to have a personality. I'm here to have a spirit. Each of us is born with a purpose for being alive.

I laugh, I love, I hope, I try I hurt, I need, I fear, I cry. And I know you do the same things too, So we're really not that different, me and you.

I would love nothing more than compromise. But I would say to you that compromise that's not a solution is a waste of time.

I've killed enough of the world's trees.

Shoes, men, coffins; never accept the first one you see.