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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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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
Work
Minutes
Economics
Doubtless
Strange
Indeed
Bestowed
Attention
Subject
Economists
Lying
Keys
Utility
True
Lies
Economist
Nature
Subjects
Exact
Seems
Conditions
Principal
Furnishes
Problem
Problems
Minute
Tracing

More quotes by 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
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There are many portions of economical doctrine which appear to me as scientific in form as they are consonant with facts.
William Stanley Jevons
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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.
William Stanley Jevons
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The point of equilibrium will be known by the criterion that an infinitely small amount of commodity exchanged in addition, at the same rate, will bring neither gain nor loss of utility.
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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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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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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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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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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Property is only another name for monopoly.
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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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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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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The difficulties of economics are mainly the difficulties of conceiving clearly and fully the conditions of utility.
William Stanley Jevons
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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.
William Stanley Jevons
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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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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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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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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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Repeated reflection and inquiry have led me to the somewhat novel opinion, that value depends entirely upon utility.
William Stanley Jevons