The discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with the other social sciences.

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

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.

Without precisely defined sources, methods, and concepts, it is possible to see absolutely everything and its opposite.

Wealth is so concentrated that a large segment of society is virtually unaware of its existence.

We know too little about global wealth dynamics, so we need international transmission of bank information.

Democracy will never be supplanted by a republic of experts—and that is a very good thing.