Over a long period of time, the main force in favor of greater equality has been the diffusion of knowledge and skills.

Refusing to deal with numbers rarely serves the interests of the least well-off.

When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.

When inequality gets to an extreme, it is completely useless for growth.

At the heart of every major political upheaval lies a fiscal revolution.

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

Contrary to a tenacious myth, France is not owned by California pension funds or the Bank of China, any more than the United States belongs to Japanese and German investors. The fear of getting into such a predicament is so strong today that fantasy often outstrips reality. The reality is that inequality with respect to capital is a far greater domestic issue than it is an international one.