William Stanley Jevons Quotes

A correspondent, Captain Charles Christie R.E., to whom I have shown these sections after they were printed, objects reasonably enough that commodity should not have been represented by M, or Mass, but by some symbol, for instance Q, which would include quantity of space or time or force, in fact almost any kind of quantity.

By induction we gain no certain knowledge; but by observation, and the inverse use of deductive reasoning, we estimate the probability that an event which has occurred was preceded by conditions of specified character, or that such conditions will be followed by the event. ...I have no objection to use the words cause and causation, provided they are never allowed to lead us to imagine that our knowledge of nature can attain to certainty. ...We can never recur too often to the truth that our knowledge of the laws and future events of the external world are only probable.

Nature is to us like an infinite ballot-box, the contents of which are being continually drawn, ball after ball, and exhibited to us. Science is but the careful observation of the succession in which balls of various character present themselves; we register the combinations, notice those which seem to be excluded from occurrence, and from the proportional frequency of those which usually appear we infer the probable character of future drawings.

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

we often observe that there is abundance of capital to be had at low rates of interest, while there are also large numbers of artisans starving for want of employment.

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

An isolated man like Alexander Selkirk might feel the benefit of a stock of provisions, tools and other means of facilitating industry, although cut off from traffic, with other men.

I feel quite unable to adopt the opinion that the moment goods pass into the possession of the consumer they cease altogether to have the attributes of capital.

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

that in the same open market, at any one moment, there cannot be two prices for the same kind of article,

In short, I do not write for mathematicians, nor as a mathematician, but as an economist wishing to convince other economists that their science can only be satisfactorily treated on an explicitly mathematical basis.

PLEASURE and pain are undoubtedly the ultimate objects of the calculus of economics. To satisfy our wants to the utmost with the least effort - to procure the greatest amount of what is desirable at the expense of the least that is undesirable - in other words, to maximize pleasure, is the problem of economics.

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

And then the difference seems to arise from the deficient harvest, from the growth of population, from the extortion of tradesmen, from anything rather than the change of a British sovereign fresh from the Mint. Value is the most invisible and impalpable of ghosts, and comes and goes unthought of while the visible and dense matter remains as it was.

Commerce is but a means to an end, the diffusion of civilization and wealth. To allow commerce to proceed until the source of civilization is weakened and overturned is like killing the goose to get the golden egg. Is the immediate creation of material wealth to be our only object?