William Stanley Jevons Quotes
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Property is only another name for monopoly.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It is clear that economics, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical science.
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Capital simply allows us to expend labour in advance.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It seems perfectly clear that Economy, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical science. There exists much prejudice against attempts to introduce the methods and language of mathematics into any branch of the moral sciences. Most persons appear to hold that the physical sciences form the proper sphere of mathematical method, and that the moral sciences demand some other method-I know not what.
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In any case I hold that there must arise a science of the development of economic forms and relations.
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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.
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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.