Quotes About Jean-Baptiste Colbert

France actually had the first ever pension schemes: the Invalides, a hostel built by Louis XIV and his prime minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–83), for disabled soldiers.

I spent the past two decades wondering why France, as a country managed in a top-down manner by an oversized state, could fare so well in so many fields. It is the country of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, after all, the grand dreamer of a state that infiltrates everything. Indeed the current culture is ultra-interventionist, sort of "if it ain't broke, fix it.