Thomas Piketty Quotes

There's this false notion that you have to separate and choose between issues of class and issues of race. What people do when they say that you need to separate class from race is that they are really just saying that people of color should come second.

As long as inequality and other social problems plague us, populists will try to exploit them.

So much has happened to obscure the dialogue about race and about gender and discrimination in general, especially where those things touch on economics.

You know, I love all kinds of activism. I certainly think blacks deserve to have something whether it is affirmative action or an opportunity that should be opened up to them. But at the same time I believe that people of color are not the only poor people in America and all over the world.

Inequality doesn't create unhappiness.

It is conflict overall that mires people in poverty. That is the first law of development.

Why did the world ever become so unequal?

Tackling inequality isn’t easy. It never has been and it never will be.

You are exacerbating inequality rather than opening up opportunity.

It's always going to be a fight for anyone who isn't an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn't have a fight.

I think that because human difference for so long, in all its various forms, has been the root of so much oppression, sometimes there's the impulse to say let's deny the difference, as though by wishing away the difference we can then wish away the oppression.

There are people who get to be three-dimensional humans in the United States, and there are people who do not.

We should get rid of 'tick box' measures that do nothing to address underlying inequality in areas like employment. And we should interrogate the claims of victimization made by some organizations to get their slice of pie.

Inequality is a poison that is destroying livelihoods, stripping families of dignity, and splitting communities.

Inequality is not the same thing as unfairness; and, to my mind, it is the latter that has incited so much political turmoil in the rich world today.

Intersectionality is not easy. It's not as though the existing frameworks that we have - from our culture, our politics, or our law - automatically lead people to being conversant and literate in intersectionality.

My whiteness, economic privilege, able-bodied privilege, family support, and so many other factors shield me from some of the worst possible consequences - often fatal ones - that result from the toxic combination of misogyny, racism, and anti-trans sentiment.

In practice, intersectionality functions as kind of caste system, in which people are judged according to how much their particular caste has suffered throughout history.

'Munmun' happened because the human world's dizzying inequality - of wealth and of power - had begun to send me over the edge, and I had to write something to try to help myself understand it a little better.

Awkwardness comes from the realization that, when you look around the world, it's difficult to identify anyone who isn't either the victim or the beneficiary of injustice.

What is it going to take to dismantle the systems that keep me from being able to live well and that keep me and so many other people from being able to access the things that we need and deserve?

Inequality is an enormously complicated thing that is both good and bad.

I just think the most difficult thing to displace is privilege.

Nobody is poor unless he stand in need of justice.

Unrestrained liberalism only makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker and excludes the most excluded.