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Léon Walras Quotes

Marie-Esprit-Léon Walras was a French mathematical economist and Georgist. He formulated the marginal theory of value and pioneered the development of general equilibrium theory. Wikipedia  

✵ 16. December 1834 – 5. January 1910
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Léon Walras: 2 quotes0 likes

Léon Walras Quotes

“It took from a hundred to a hundred and fifty or two hundred years for the astronomy of Kepler to become the astronomy of Newton and Laplace], and for the mechanics of [[Galileo to become the mechanics of d'Alembert and Lagrange. On the other hand, less than a century has elapsed between the publication of Adam Smith’s work and the contributions of Cournot, Gossen, Jevons, and myself.”

Léon Walras

In : John Cunningham Wood (1993), Léon Walras: The life of Léon Walras and perspectives on his thought. Taylor & Francis, p. 32-33.

“I say that things are useful whenever they can be put to any use at all; whenever they are seen to be capable of satisfying a want. In this connection, there is no need to consider the subtle shades of meaning classified in ordinary language under terms ranging from the necessary to the useful, from the useful to the agreeable, from the agreeable to the superfluous. For present purposes, necessary, useful, agreeable and superfluous simply mean more or less useful. Furthermore, we need not concern ourselves with the morality or immorality of any desire which a useful thing answers or serves to satisfy. From other points of view the question of whether a drug is wanted by a doctor to cure a patient, or by a murderer to kill his family is a very serious matter, but from our point of view, it is totally irrelevant. So far as we are concerned, the drug is useful in both cases, and may even be more so in the latter case than in the former.”

Léon Walras

Léon Walras, Elements d'économie pure, ou théorie de la richesse sociale, 1874, Translation, Routledge, 1954/2013, p. 65.

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