We have a locale-based education system; we have increasing economic segregation. We clearly need a larger federal program to try to help disadvantaged districts.

The euro zone was driven by the neoliberal view that markets are always efficient. That in itself is political. There was no pressing economic need that the euro was required to solve, but leaders believed that it would foster growth.

In the end, the politics of the euro zone weren't strong enough to create a fully integrated fiscal union with a common banking system, etc.

A single currency entails a fixed interest rate, which means countries can't manage their own currency to suit their own needs. You need a variety of institutions to help nations for which the policies aren't well suited. Europe introduced the euro without providing those structures.

America's role in the global economy inevitably was going to diminish; we're smaller relative to - as China, India, other emerging markets grow.

China-led globalization in some ways worries me because they are not concerned about human rights, labor rights. They probably aren't even really concerned about competitive marketplaces. So in some ways, they're like Mr. Trump.

It isn't inevitable that we have a globalization which is used by the corporations not to pay taxes. It is not inevitable that we have a form of globalization in which corporations use the threat of moving jobs abroad to lower wages. None of this is inevitable.

We could have managed globalization in ways that ordinary citizens would have benefited rather than just the corporations. Trade is beneficial. There are gains to be had from taking advantage of comparative advantage and specialization. That's true, if you manage globalization right.

Some people say we have this inequality because some people have been contributing much more to our society, and so it's fair that they get more. But then you look at the people who are at the top, and you realize they're not the people who have transformed our economy, our society.

European officials thought that austerity was part of what they called their 'convergence policies,' of trying to bring countries together. Instead, it actually made things worse. There's more inequality within countries and more disparity across countries.

A less healthy America is not going to be as productive.

People at the top spend less money than those at the bottom, so when you have redistribution toward the top, aggregate demand goes down. Unless you intervene, you're going to have a weak economy unless something else happens.

What I argued in 'The Great Divide' is that societies can't function without trust, both politically and economically.

Americans like to say we're fighting for democracy, and yet young Americans have come to the view that democracy doesn't deliver.

What's going to happen is that there will be a definite consensus that Europe is not working. The diagnosis will be to shed the currency and keep the rest, or that Europe is not working and a broader rejection - like in the U.K.

I'm enough of a political junkie to know if you have large numbers of people much worse off, you're going to have consequences.

I began my career as a physicist. And in the White House, my buddies were the people from the White House office of science and technology policy. But a lot of the people were lawyers. They like winning an argument, but science-based, evidence-based reasoning was just sort of not in their framework.

The financial sector has so distorted salaries that physicists are getting drawn into the financial sector. All that has led to an undersupply of people committed to the public sector.

While it was an experiment to bring them together, nothing has divided Europe as much as the euro.

With my kids, I'm a little sappier than my father may have been.

If I came home with a grade of A, my father would say, 'There must have been a lot of dummies in that class.'

To someone like me, who has watched trade negotiations closely for more than a quarter-century, it is clear that U.S. trade negotiators got most of what they wanted. The problem was with what they wanted. Their agenda was set, behind closed doors, by corporations.

Trump will fail even in his proclaimed goal of reducing the trade deficit, which is determined by the disparity between domestic savings and investment.

Trump assumed office promising to 'drain the swamp' in Washington, D.C. Instead, the swamp has grown wider and deeper.

When markets fail, as they often do, collective action becomes imperative.

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself.

Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.

There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared: twins.

The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way.

Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.

Laughter is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one place.

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.

There's a lot of people in this world who spend so much time watching their health that they haven't the time to enjoy it.

There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory.

Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can't help but smile on it.

Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt, not swallowed.

Money will buy a pretty good dog, but it won't buy the wag of his tail.

There are two kinds of fools: those who can't change their opinions and those who won't.

It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so.

There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply.

The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.

The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time.

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

You'd better not know so much, than to know so many things that ain't so.

There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying.

Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain't lawful tender for a loaf of bread.

Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.