Das Kapital, I think, is very difficult to read, and for me, it was not very influential.

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

For far too long economists have sought to define themselves in terms of their supposedly scientific methods. In fact, those methods rely on an immoderate use of mathematical models, which are frequently no more than an excuse for occupying the terrain and masking the vacuity of the content.

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

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

Our modern democratic ideal is based on the hope that inequalities will be based on merit more than inheritance or luck.

There is one great advantage to being an academic economist in France: here, economists are not highly respected in the academic and intellectual world or by political and financial elites. Hence they must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that they know almost nothing about anything.