It's important to realize that innovation and growth in itself are not sufficient to moderate inequality of wealth.

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.

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

The principal mechanism for convergence at the international as well as the domestic level is the diffusion of knowledge.

No hypocrisy is too great when economic and financial elites are obliged to defend their interest.

I certainly agree that capital is not a one-dimensional object, and that the return on capital takes very different forms for different assets or different people.

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