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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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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
Arguing
Clearly
Steps
Difficult
Science
Nature
Magnitudes
Firsts
Magnitude
First
Conceive

More quotes by 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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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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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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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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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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Property is only another name for monopoly.
William Stanley Jevons
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It isrequisite from time to time to remind one generation of the experience which led a former generation to important legislative actions.
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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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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The child which overbalances itself in learning to walk is experimenting on the law of gravity.
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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The calculus of utility aims at supplying the ordinary wants of man at the least cost of labour.
William Stanley Jevons
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As a general rule, it is foolish to do just what other people are doing, because there are almost sure to be too many people doing the same thing.
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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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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A correct theory is the first step towards improvement, by showing what we need and what we might accomplish.
William Stanley Jevons
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Capital simply allows us to expend labour in advance.
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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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