Jean-Baptiste Colbert

"The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to procure the largest quantity of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing."

"Que faut-il faire pour vous aider? Laissez-nous faire!"

"It is simply, and solely, the abundance of money within a state [which] makes the difference in its grandeur and power."

"As a rigid logician, [Colbert] cannot object to the reduction of his principles to a logical absurdity, which may be stated thus. The growth of French industry and commerce requires that a high standard of quality in the products be maintained. This standard can only be secured by Government regulation: this regulation can only be forced on an unwilling people by search for and exposure of defective goods: this search injures the trade which it is desired to promote, and disheartens the merchants and others whose zealous cooperation is of the last importance for the success of French industry and commerce. Of course the fallacy lies in the first statement, the assumption that an absolute standard of excellence exists, and that the producer is a better judge of it than the consumer."