Thomas Piketty

“Economists have put themselves in a position where what they are doing is supposed to be impossible to understand for outsiders, so they don't even talk - sometimes not even with their girlfriend or boyfriend or friends - about what they are doing.”

“Market forces and capitalism by themselves aren't sufficient to ensure the common good and to limit the concentration of wealth at levels that are compatible with democratic ideals.”

“I think if you look back through time, the history of income, wealth and taxation is full of surprise. So I am not terribly impressed by those who know in advance what will or will not happen.”

“Economists tend to think they are much, much smarter than historians, than everybody. And this is a bit too much because at the end of the day, we don't know very much in economics.”

“Income from labor [in the United States] is about as unequally distributed as has ever been observed anywhere.”

“The main force pushing toward reduction in inequality has always been the diffusion of knowledge and the diffusion of education.”

“I'm not as pessimistic as what a number of people seem to believe.”

“The U.S. is the country that invented progressive taxation of income and of inherited wealth in the 1910s and '20s.”

“There is a fundamentalist belief by capitalists that capital will save the world, and it just isn't so.”

“I am not political. It is not my job. But I would be happy if politicians could read my work and draw some conclusions from it.”

“Economists should be modest and be aware that they are part of the broader social science community. We need to be pragmatic about the methods we use. When we need to do history, we should do history. When we need to study political science, we should study political science.”

“I am afraid that if you don't find peaceful domestic solutions to our inequality and social problems, then it's always tempting to find other people responsible for our problems.”

“Yeah, I am in favor of migration. But I am also in favor of education. But at the same time, I am in favor of progressive taxation. I think we need all of this. I think we don't have to choose one.”

“I don't live in the Cold War. Some people maybe still live in the Cold War, but this is their problem, not mine.”

“I loved American universities. In many ways, they are better organized - certainly than French universities.”

“Our democratic societies rest on a meritocratic worldview, or at any rate a meritocratic hope, by which I mean a belief in a society in which inequality is based more on merit and effort than on kinship and rents. This belief and this hope play a very crucial role in modern society, for a simple reason: in a democracy, the professed equality of rights of all citizens contrasts sharply with the very real inequality of living conditions, and in order to overcome this contradiction it is vital to make sure that social inequalities derive from rational and universal principles rather than arbitrary contingencies. Inequalities must therefore be just and useful to all, at least in the realm of discourse and as far as possible in reality as well.”

“One way to have broader access to wealth is to reduce the tax on the large group and increase the tax on the very top so concentration of wealth doesn't get to extreme levels.”

“You need some inequality to grow... but extreme inequality is not only useless but can be harmful to growth because it reduces mobility and can lead to political capture of our democratic institutions.”

“All told, over the period 1932-1980, nearly half a century, the top federal income tax rate in the United States averaged 81 percent.”

“Capitalism and market forces are very powerful in producing wealth and innovation. But we need to ensure that these forces act in the common interest.”