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

William Stanley Jevons

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William Stanley Jevons
Age: 46 †
Born: 1835
Born: September 1
Died: 1882
Died: August 13
Economist
Philosopher
Photographer
Statistician
City of Liverpool
Jevons
William Stanley
Service
Objects
Shall
Pleasure
Ward
Pain
Commodity
Understand
Afford
Action
Substance
Object

More quotes by William Stanley Jevons

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Property is only another name for monopoly.
William Stanley Jevons
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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.
William Stanley Jevons
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Labour once spent has no influence on the future value of any article it isgone and lost for ever. In commerce bygones are forever bygones and we are alwaysstarting clearat each moment, judging the values of things with a view to future utility.
William Stanley Jevons
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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.
William Stanley Jevons
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As there are so many who talk prose without knowing it, or, again, who syllogize without having the least idea what a syllogism is, so economists have long been mathematicians without being aware of the fact.
William Stanley Jevons
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You will perceive that economy, scientifically speaking, is a very contracted science it is in fact a sort of vague mathematics which calculates the causes and effects of man's industry, and shows how it may be best applied.
William Stanley Jevons
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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.
William Stanley Jevons
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One pound invested for five years gives the same result as five pounds invested for one year, the product being five pound years.
William Stanley Jevons
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Fertility of imagination and abundance of guesses at truth are among the first requisites of discovery but the erroneous guesses must almost of necessity be many times as numerous as those which prove well founded.
William Stanley Jevons
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Economists can never be free of from difficulties unless they will distinguish between a theory and the application of a theory.
William Stanley Jevons
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The difficulties of economics are mainly the difficulties of conceiving clearly and fully the conditions of utility.
William Stanley Jevons
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but, in reality, there is no such thing as an exact science.
William Stanley Jevons
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Over-production is not possible in all branches of industry at once, but it is possible in some as compared to others.
William Stanley Jevons
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The theory which follows is entirely based on a calculus of pleasure and pain and the object of economics is to maximize happiness by purchasing pleasure, as it were, at the lowest cost of pain.
William Stanley Jevons
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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.
William Stanley Jevons
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Repeated reflection and inquiry have led me to the somewhat novel opinion, that value depends entirely upon utility.
William Stanley Jevons
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One of the most important axioms is, that as the quantity of any commodity, for instance, plain food, which a man has to consume, increases, so the utility or benefit derived from the last portion used decreases in degree. The decrease in enjoyment between the beginning and the end of a meal may be taken as an example.
William Stanley Jevons
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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.
William Stanley Jevons
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It is clear that economics, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical science.
William Stanley Jevons
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What capital I give for the spade merely replaces what the manufacturer had already invested in the expectation that the spade would be needed.
William Stanley Jevons