William Stanley Jevons Quotes

Value is the most invincible and impalpable of ghosts, and comes and goes unthought of, while the visible and dense matter remains as it was.

The difficulties of economics are mainly the difficulties of conceiving clearly and fully the conditions of utility.

Fertility of imagination and abundance of guesses at the truth are among the first requisites of discovery.

Repeated reflection and inquiry have led me to the somewhat novel opinion, that value depends entirely upon utility.

Property is only another name for monopoly.

The calculus of utility aims at supplying the ordinary wants of man at the least cost of labour.

The child which overbalances itself in learning to walk is experimenting on the law of gravity.

The whole question of the steam engine is one of economy. It's development consist of nothing but the quest for greater efficiency.

The more refined and intellectual our needs become, the less they are capable of satiety.

It isrequisite from time to time to remind one generation of the experience which led a former generation to important legislative actions.

In any case I hold that there must arise a science of the development of economic forms and relations.

Economists can never be free of from difficulties unless they will distinguish between a theory and the application of a theory.

There are many portions of economical doctrine which appear to me as scientific in form as they are consonant with facts.

But, in reality, there is no such thing as an exact science.

It is clear that economics, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical science.

A correct theory is the first step towards improvement, by showing what we need and what we might accomplish.

A little experience is worth much argument; a few facts are better than any theory.

One pound invested for five years gives the same result as five pounds invested for one year, the product being five pound years.

As a general rule, it is foolish to do just what other people are doing, because there are almost sure to be too many people doing the same thing.

Science arises from the discovery of Identity amid Diversity.

What capital I give for the spade merely replaces what the manufacturer had already invested in the expectation that the spade would be needed.

The theory of Economics must begin with a correct theory of consumption.

Capital simply allows us to expend labour in advance.

One of the first and most difficult steps in a science is to conceive clearly the nature of the magnitudes about which we are arguing.

Over-production is not possible in all branches of industry at once, but it is possible in some as compared to others.

By a commodity we shall understand any object, substance, action or service, which can afford pleasure or ward off pain.