Quotes by Alfred Marshall

“(1) Use mathematics as shorthand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important i...”

“Capital is that part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth.”

“The price of every thing rises and falls from time to time and place to place and with every such change the purchasing power of money changes so far as that thing goes. ”

“But if inventions have increased man's power over nature very much, then the real value of money is better measured for some purposes in labour than in commodities.”

“Civilized countries generally adopt gold or silver or both as money.”

“I am myself an uncompromising anti-Jingoe, a peace-at-almost-any-price man. Chamberlain is the only Unionist public man whom I have ever thoroughly distrusted. Excepting Napoleon, I believe that En...”

“I have not been able to lay my hands on any notes as to Mathematico-economics that would be of any use to you. I have very indistinct memories of what I used to think on the subject. I never read m...”

“There has always been a temptation to classify economic goods in clearly defined groups, about which a number of short and sharp propositions could be made, to gratify at once the student’s desire ...”

“Political Economy or Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life; it examines that part of individual and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and ...”

“[E]ach several want is limited, and... with every increase in the amount of a thing which a man has, the eagerness of his desire to obtain more of it diminishes; until it yields place to the desire...”

“The increment of the commodity which he is only just induced to acquire (whether by... direct labor or by purchase) may be called its Marginal Increment; because he is on the margin of doubt whethe...”

“And thus the law may be worded:—The marginal utility of a commodity to anyone diminishes with every increase in the amount of it he already has.”

“If we compare one country of the civilized world with another, or one part of England with another, or one trade in England with another, we find that the degradation of the working-classes varies ...”

“Our understanding of how markets and businesses operate was passed down to us more than a century ago by a handful of European economists — Alfred Marshall in England and a few of his contemporarie...”

“One of the most important skills of the economist, therefore, is that of simplification of the model. Two important methods of simplification have been developed by economists. One is the method of...”

“[Y]our letter concerning my paper... has told me much... concerning the ideas current in philosophical subjects in Cambridge. I was not aware that Marshall had so long entertained notions of a quan...”

“The study of economics does not seem to require any specialized gifts of an unusually high order. Is it not, intellectually regarded, a very easy subject compared with the higher branches of philos...”

“Jevons saw the kettle boil and cried out with the delighted voice of a child; Marshall too had seen the kettle boil and sat down silently to build an engine.”

“Though a skilled mathematician, he used mathematics sparingly. He saw that excessive reliance on this instrument might lead us astray in pursuit of intellectual toys, imaginary problems not conform...”

“Marshall did something much more effective than changing the answer. He changed the question. For Ricardo the Theory of Value was a means of studying the distribution of total output between wages,...”