Quotes from work The Theory of Political Economy (William Stanley Jevons) (page 2)

“Ina regular and constant employment the greatest result will always be gained by such a rate as allows a workman each day, or each week at the most, to recover all fatigue and recommence with an undiminished store of energy.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter V, Theory of Labour, p. 176.

“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 The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter VII, Theory of Capital, p. 209.

“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 The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter VII, Theory of Capital, p. 188.

“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 The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter VII, Theory of Capital, p. 198.

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

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter III, Theory of Utility, p. 61.

“that in the same open market, at any one moment, there cannot be two prices for the same kind of article”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter IV, Theory of Exchange, p. 97.

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

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter I, Introduction, p. 37.

“we often observe that there is abundance of capital to be had at low rates of interest, while there are also large numbers of artisans starving for want of employment.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter VIII, Concluding Remarks, p. 215.

“In this work I have attempted to treat economy as a calculus of pleasure and pain, and have sketched out, almost irrespective of previous opinions, the form which the science, as it seems to me, must ultimately take.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Preface To The First Edition, p. 4.
The Theory of Political Economy (1871)

“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 The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter IV, Theory of Exchange, p. 110.

“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 The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter III, Theory of Utility, p. 78.

“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 The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter VIII : Concluding Remarks, The Noxious Influence of Authority, p. 221.

“Property is only another name for monopoly.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Preface To The Second Edition, p. 29.
The Theory of Political Economy (1871)

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

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter VII, Theory of Capital, p. 187.

“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 The Theory of Political Economy

Preface To The Second Edition, p. 8.
The Theory of Political Economy (1871)

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

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Preface To The First Edition, p. 3.
The Theory of Political Economy (1871)

“Every one gets the most which he can for his exertions”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Preface To The Second Edition, p. 31.
The Theory of Political Economy (1871)
Context: 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.

“Previous to the time of Pascal, who would have thought of measuring doubt and belief?”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Who could have conceived that the investigation of petty games of chance would have led to the most sublime branch of mathematical science - the theory of probabilities?
Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter I, Introduction, p. 41.

“Our English economists have been living in a fool's paradise.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Preface To The Second Edition, p. 27-28.
The Theory of Political Economy (1871)
Context: The conclusion to which I am ever more clearly coming is that the only hope of attaining a true system of economics is to fling aside, once and forever, the mazy and preposterous assumptions of the Ricardian school. Our English economists have been living in a fool's paradise. The truth is with the French school, and the sooner we recognize the fact, the better it will be for all the world, except perhaps the few writers who are far too committed to the old erroneous doctrines to allow for renunciation.

“Truth indeed is sacred; but, as Pilate said, "What is truth?"”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter VIII : Concluding Remarks, The Noxious Influence of Authority, p. 220.
Context: Truth indeed is sacred; but, as Pilate said, "What is truth?" Show us the undoubted infallible criterion of absolute truth, and we will hold it as a sacred inviolable thing. But in the absence of that infallible criterion, we have all an equal right to grope about in our search of it, and no body and no school nor clique must be allowed to set up a standard of orthodoxy which shall bar the freedom of scientific inquiry.

Quotes from work
The Theory of Political Economy

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