Thomas Piketty Quotes

I would say I was still a Marxist - which is not to be confused with being a Communist. Despite its flaws, Marxism still seems to explain the material world better than anything else.

Despite its flaws, Marxism still seems to explain the material world better than anything else.

As for Marx, his economic value, apart from occasional … flashes of insight, is nil.

I am sure that, on the one hand, the Rothschilds appreciate the merits of Marx, and that on the other hand, Marx feels an instinctive inclination and a great respect for the Rothschilds.

There is one good thing about Marx: he was not a Keynesian.

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

It is therefore utterly false to say that Marx revokes the law of value as far as individual commodities are concerned, and maintains it in force solely for the aggregate of these commodities.

[Referring to Karl Marx:] ... the prince of muddleheads.

Karl Marx is not a very popular figure any more but once in a while he said something very sensible.

I was certain that I was not a Marxist, but I did believe firmly that a connection between economics and politics existed

I'm a Marxist.

I am still moved by passages of Marx: the 'Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,' for example, where, after the famous line about religion being 'the opium of the people,' he goes on to call it 'the heart of a heartless world.'

All I know is that I am not a Marxist.

Just as Marx used to say about the French Marxists of the late 'seventies: All I know is that I am not a Marxist.

The first time I read Marx, all I knew was he had given rise to this [Soviet] system that was supposed to be more or less the devil's work. It's disconcerting to read what he had to say and see that a lot of it was very human and very decent and didn't seem to be the work of the devil at all.

Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx.

Something that's seldom appreciated about me is that I am in sympathy with a great deal of what Marx wrote, except that I'm on the side of the bourgeoisie.

How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

My first encounter with Marx's writings came very early in life, as a result of the strange times I grew up in, with Greece exiting the nightmare of the neofascist dictatorship of 1967-74.

I can understand Communism, but not Socialism.

There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, off era a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has, indeed, triumphed in one country.

Marx, as we have seen, solved it by declaring capital to be a different thing from product, and maintaining that it belonged to society and should be seized by society and employed for the benefit of all alike.

And Marx spoke of the fact that socialism will be the kingdom of freedom, where man realizes himself in a way that humankind has never seen before. This was an inspiring body of literature to read.

I always thought communism was crap, really.

Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history.