Top 40 William Stanley Jevons Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A little experience is worth much argument; a few facts are better than any theory.”

— William Stanley Jevons

2. “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

3. “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

4. “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

5. “A correct theory is the first step towards improvement, by showing what we need and what we might accomplish.”

— William Stanley Jevons

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

— William Stanley Jevons

7. “Fertility of imagination and abundance of guesses at the truth are among the first requisites of discovery.”

— William Stanley Jevons

8. “The difficulties of economics are mainly the difficulties of conceiving clearly and fully the conditions of utility.”

— William Stanley Jevons

9. “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

10. “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

11. “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

12. “Science arises from the discovery of Identity amid Diversity.”

— William Stanley Jevons

13. “Capital simply allows us to expend labour in advance.”

— William Stanley Jevons

14. “Repeated reflection and inquiry have led me to the somewhat novel opinion, that value depends entirely upon utility.”

— William Stanley Jevons

15. “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

16. “Property is only another name for monopoly.”

— William Stanley Jevons

17. “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

18. “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

19. “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

20. “It is clear that economics, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical science.”

— William Stanley Jevons

21. “Among minor alterations, I may mention the substitution for the name political economy of the single convenient term economics. I cannot help thinking that it would be well to discard, as quickly as possible, the old troublesome double-worded name of our science.”

— William Stanley Jevons

22. “The calculus of utility aims at supplying the ordinary wants of man at the least cost of labour.”

— William Stanley Jevons

23. “The child which overbalances itself in learning to walk is experimenting on the law of gravity.”

— William Stanley Jevons

24. “The more refined and intellectual our needs become, the less they are capable of satiety.”

— William Stanley Jevons

25. “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

26. “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

27. “I consider that interest is determined by the increment of produce which it enables a labourer to obtain, and is altogether independent of the total return which he receives for this labour.”

— William Stanley Jevons

28. “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

29. “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

30. “A spade may be made of any size, and if the same number of strokes be made in the hour, the requisite exertion will vary nearly as the cube of the length of the blade.”

— William Stanley Jevons

31. “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

32. “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

33. “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

34. “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

35. “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

36. “The whole result of continued labour is not often consumed and enjoyed in a moment; the result generally lasts for a certain length of time. We must then conceive the capital as being progressively uninvested.”

— William Stanley Jevons

37. “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

38. “There are many portions of economical doctrine which appear to me as scientific in form as they are consonant with facts.”

— William Stanley Jevons

39. “Economists can never be free of from difficulties unless they will distinguish between a theory and the application of a theory.”

— William Stanley Jevons

40. “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

41. “All classes of society are trade unionists at heart, and differ chiefly in the boldness, ability, and secrecy with which they pursue their respective interests.”

— William Stanley Jevons

42. “Logic should no longer be considered an elegant and learned accomplishment; it should take its place as an indispensable study for every well-informed person.”

— William Stanley Jevons

43. “In any case I hold that there must arise a science of the development of economic forms and relations.”

— William Stanley Jevons

44. “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

45. “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