What's Inside This Mental Breakdown of Writing? Here, you'll find my wandering thoughts on economics, geopolitics, culture, technology, and daily ideas. Plus, I'll be dropping little peeks behind the curtain on my novel and nonfiction projects.
"My eclectic taste allows me to do something unique and not box myself in." ~ Hoodie Allen
"My reading is extremely eclectic. Lately I've been teaching myself computer graphics, so I'm reading a lot about that. I read books of trivia, of facts." ~ Jack Prelutsky
"It's great that there are so many different kinds of books for kids and adults to choose from. I think an eclectic reader is the best kind of reader to be, which would be why I was always so satisfied to hear that kids read the Baby-Sitters Club books and then went on and discovered other authors and other genres." ~ Ann M.…
"In fact, Donald [Trump] was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis." ~ Hillary Clinton
"To create a housing shortage in a huge country, heavily wooded, with a small population -- ah, that's proof of pure political genius." ~ Richard J. Needham
"Study after study, not only here but in other countries, show that the most affordable housing is where there has been the least government interference with the market - contrary to rhetoric." ~ Thomas Sowell
"After political crusades for 'affordable housing' ended up ruining the housing market and much of the economy with it, many…
"Indigenous people believe that Man belongs to the World; civilized people believe that the World belongs to Man." ~ Daniel Quinn
"Indigenous people made huge contributions to this country. The biggest is in sharing the land and resources. People need to see that, understand that. Indigenous people should be viewed as the founding peoples of this land." ~ Perry Bellegarde
"We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle, or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be victims of intolerance and racism." ~ Rigoberta Menchu
"I resolutely believe that respect for diversity is…
"Our nuclear weapons are meant purely as a deterrent against nuclear adventure by an adversary." ~ Atal Bihari Vajpayee
"We have got thousands of nuclear weapons in order to achieve deterrence." ~ John Spratt
"That's a point that Dan Ellsberg has made for years. He said it's kind of like if you and I go into a grocery store to rob it, and I have a gun. The guy may give you the money in the cash register. I'm using the gun even if I don't shoot. Well that's nuclear weapons - essential to post-war deterrence - they cast a shadow over everything." ~ Noam Chomsky
In the black depths of the…
Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. ~Milton Friedman
"Coercion cannot but result in chaos in the end." ~ Mahatma Gandhi
"I support free trade. Donald Trump supports free trade.Trade means jobs. Jobs in the United States, jobs in my home state of Indiana are supported by international exports." ~ Mike Pence
When Trump announced a 90-day suspension on his sweeping outrageous tariffs, I initially felt relieved,…
"Never in human history has a whimsical decision by a single person destroyed so much wealth." ~Arindrajit Dube
"I keep asking myself, 'What is this [Trump] Administration trying to do? Was the objective to re-industrialize the United States, or to raise revenue to help pay for tax cuts to the rich, or to change the global flow of funds? My answer consistently is, they want to remake America, but you can't remake America unless you remake the world at the same time. So it's a revolutionary movement." ~Viktor Shvets
Musk publicly denounced the Trump trade adviser and tariff architect Peter…
A few yes men may be born, but mostly they are made. Fear is a great breeder of them. ~William Wrigley, Jr.
I only have 'yes' men around me. Who needs 'no' men? ~Mae West
Be aware of "yes" men. Generally, they are losers. Surround yourself with winners. Never forget - people win. ~Bear Bryant
I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their job. ~Samuel Goldwyn
I didn't feel the need to have a lot of yes-men standing around me. As Mitchell Sharp once put it, the bigger the staff, the smaller the minister. ~Jean Chretien
The best…
"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." ~ H. L. Mencken
"Reason and truth have rarely prevailed against demagoguery when the audience is too ignorant to tell the difference." ~ Charley Reese
"Exploiting people's emotions of fear, envy and anxiety is not hope, it's not change, it's partisanship. We don't need partisanship. We don't need demagoguery, we need solutions." ~ Paul Ryan
"American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information,…
"It's not a matter of maintaining the status quo. We have to create a dynamic state, oriented towards expansion." ~ David Ben-Gurion
"Stalinism is linked with a cult of personality and massive violations of the law, with repression and camps. There is nothing like that in Russia and, I hope, will never again be..." ~ Vladimir Putin
"Within a capitalist consumer society, the cult of personality has the power to subsume ideas, to make the person, the personality into the product and not the work itself." ~ Bell Hooks
You were raised in a world where the cultural norms mostly revolved…
"It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me." ~ Stephen Fry
"You have social media and the Internet and immigration and so, suddenly, cultures are clashing and people feel as if they're less familiar with the people around them. That causes social anxieties." ~ Barack Obama
Whenever your society is stressed, especially…
"It's a deep and all but certain truth about narcissistic personalities that to meet them is to love them, but to know them well is to find them unbearable. Confidence quickly curdles into arrogance; smarts turn to smugness, charm turns to smarm." ~ Jeffrey Kluger
"At times we can be self-absorbed. Lord, help us to open our hearts to others and to serve those who are most vulnerable." ~ Pope Francis
"It's really hard to have a fair discussion when you're faced with militarism, aggression, and greed. The militarists do not want dialogue. They want what they want. They're psychotic. They're…
"Nobody can solve debt problems like me." ~ Donald Trump
"I've always felt fine about Putin. I think he is a strong leader, he's a powerful leader, he's represented his country the way - the country is being represented." ~ Donald Trump
"I'm going to fight for every person in America who believes government should serve the people, not the donors and not the special interests." ~ Donald Trump
"Any violation of civil rights will be aggressively pursued and prosecuted by my administration. No one will be above the law." ~ Donald Trump
"When I started out in business, I spent a great deal…
"Bow or bend the knee," The President snarled, his voice harsh as metal rasp-seared by flames, raw and hollow and with the furnace intensity of conquest. His voice ripped breath from him, with the stench of burned treaties and broken nations. The room, a deformed replica of the old United Nations chamber, fell silent.
The gathered heads of state, some dressed in suits, others in shackles, stumbled, looking up towards the charred iron and oil-soiled gold throne. The President's right hand hung by his side, the black diamond ring on the violated heart of Africa glinting under the cold…
"When it comes to economics, president-elect [Donald] Trump has promised to revive American manufacturing, get tough on trade with China, cut taxes and invest in infrastructure." ~ Judy Woodruff
"The vast majority of Americans are employed in service sector industries, and many of those sectors are highly internationalized. The most high-value added sectors, notably the tech sector, is massively globalized. And, for them, it would be a disaster if America's trade policy was to go down a spiraling route towards protectionism." ~ Judy Woodruff
"China's idea of fair trade is government…
"In a sense, artificial intelligence will be the ultimate tool because it will help us build all possible tools." ~ K. Eric Drexler
"You can't just stop technological progress. Even if one country stops researching artificial intelligence, some other countries will continue to do it. The real question is what to do with the technology. You can use exactly the same technology for very different social and political purposes. So I think people shouldn't be focused on the question of how to stop technological progress because this is impossible. Instead the question should be what kind of…