William Stanley Jevons Quotes

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

Capital simply allows us to expend labour in advance.

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.

Ina regular and constant employment the greatest result will always be gained by such a rate as allows a workman each day,or each week at the most, to recover all fatigue and recommence with an undiminished store of energy.

A spade may be made of any size, and if the same number of strokes be made in the hour, the requisite exertion will vary nearly as the cube of the length of the blade.

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

We shall never have a science of economics unless we learn to discern the operation of law even among the most perplexing complications and apparent interruptions.

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

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

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

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.

My principal work now lies in tracing out the exact nature and conditions of utility. It seems strange indeed that economists have not bestowed more minute attention on a subject which doubtless furnishes the true key to the problems of economics.

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

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.

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