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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
Ward
Pleasure
Pain
Commodity
Understand
Afford
Action
Substance
Object
Service
Objects
Shall

More quotes by 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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The child which overbalances itself in learning to walk is experimenting on the law of gravity.
William Stanley Jevons
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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.
William Stanley Jevons
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The whole value of science consists in the power which it confers upon us of applying to one object the knowledge acquired from like objects and it is only so far, therefore, as we can discover and register resemblances that we can turn our observations to account.
William Stanley Jevons
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In matters of philosophy and science authority has ever been the great opponent of truth. A despotic calm is usually the triumph of error. In the republic of the sciences sedition and even anarchy are beneficial in the long run to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
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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I protest against deference to any man, whether John Stuart Mill, or Adam Smith, or Aristotle, being allowed to check inquiry. Our science has become far too much a stagnant one, in which opinions rather than experience and reason are appealed to.
William Stanley Jevons
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Some of the gold possessed by the Romans is doubtless mixed with what we now possess and some small part of it will be handed down as long as the human race exists.
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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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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Logic is not only an exact science, but is the most simple and elementary of all sciences it ought therefore undoubtedly to find some place in every course of education.
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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Property is only another name for monopoly.
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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There is no such thing as absolute cost of labour it is all a matter of comparison. Every one gets the most which he can for his exertions some can get little or nothing, because they have not sufficient strength, knowledge or ingenuity others get much, because they have, comparatively speaking, a monopoly of certain powers.
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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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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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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There are a multitude of allied branches of knowledge connected with mans condition the relation of these to political economy is analogous to the connexion of mechanics, astronomy, optics, sound, heat, and every other branch more or less of physical science, with pure mathematics.
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