Quotes from Thomas Piketty

What I'm pushing for is an economic discipline that will be closer to other social sciences; in particular, we should be more pragmatic about the methods that we are using instead of pretending that we have our own scientific apparatus with very sophisticated mathematic models that distinguish us from sociologists and historians.

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

I was born too late to have any temptation with communism, or at least Soviet-type communism. Travelling in Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union, you clearly don't want to defend a system that would have empty shops and a totalitarian regime and internal passports.

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

When you are an entrepreneur, you have founded your own firm, it is so easy to find that you exist - you are the main shareholder of your company; it is very easy to look at the stock market position of your company to know how rich you are.

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.

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.

When inequality gets too extreme, then it becomes useless for growth, and it can even become bad because it tends to lead to high perpetuation of inequality over time and low mobility.

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.

We want capitalism and market forces to be the slave of democracy rather than the opposite.

Once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future.

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.

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.

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