Famous Quotes & Sayings

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 17 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Thomas Robert Malthus.

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google+ Pinterest Share on Linkedin

Famous Quotes By Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 1127526

The real perfectibility of man may be illustrated, as I have
mentioned before, by the perfectibility of a plant. The object of the
enterprising florist is, as I conceive, to unite size, symmetry, and beauty
of colour. It would surely be presumptuous in the most successful
improver to affirm, that he possessed a carnation in which these
qualities existed in the greatest possible state of perfection. However
beautiful his flower may be, other care, other soil, or other suns, might
produce one still more beautiful. — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 984231

any great interference with the affairs of other people is a species of tyranny, — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 1074578

All that I can say is, that the wisest and best men in all ages had agreed in giving the preference, very greatly, to the pleasures of intellect; and that my own experience completely confirmed the truth of their decisions; that I had found sensual pleasures vain, transient, and continually attended with tedium and disgust; but that intellectual pleasures appeared to me ever fresh and young, filled up all my hours satisfactorily, gave a new zest to life, and diffused a lasting serenity over my mind — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 1787378

The vices and moral weakness of man are not invincible: Man is perfectible, or in other words, susceptible of perpetual improvement. — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 1872663

nothing is so easy as to find fault with human institutions; nothing so difficult as to suggest adequate practical improvements. — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 1523803

There can be little doubt that the equalization of property which we have supposed, added to the circumstance of the labour of the whole community being directed chiefly to agriculture, would tend greatly to augment the produce of the country. — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 1420459

man as he really is, inert, sluggish, and averse from labour, unless compelled by necessity — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 2189253

The constancy of the laws of nature, or the certainty with which we may expect the same effects from the same causes, is the foundation of the faculty of reason. — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 1896104

everything is appropriated? — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 1660923

Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 1573427

It may be said with truth that man is always susceptible of
improvement — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 1558168

One principal reason is that the histories of mankind that we possess are histories only of the higher classes. We have but few accounts that can be depended upon of the manners and customs of that part of mankind where these retrograde and progressive movements chiefly take place. — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 107469

I should be inclined, therefore, as I have hinted before, to consider the world and this life as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mind, a process necessary to awaken inert, chaotic matter into spirit, to sublimate the dust of the earth into soul, to elicit an ethereal spark from the clod of clay. And in this view of the subject, the various impressions and excitements which man receives through life may be considered as the forming hand of his Creator, acting by general laws, and awakening his sluggish existence, by the animating touches of the Divinity, into a capacity of superior enjoyment. The original sin of man is the torpor and corruption of the chaotic matter in which he may be said to be born. — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 1204689

as long as a
great number of those impressions which form character, like the nice
motions of the arm, remain absolutely independent of the will of man,
though it would be the height of folly and presumption to attempt to
calculate the relative proportions of virtue and vice at the future periods
of the world, it may be safely asserted that the vices and moral
weakness of mankind, taken in the mass, are invincible. — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 1154369

The view which he has given of human life has a melancholy hue,
but he feels conscious that he has drawn these dark tints from a
conviction that they are really in the picture, and not from a jaundiced
eye or an inherent spleen of disposition. — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 1139724

spend all the wages they earn and enjoy themselves while they can appears to be evident from the number of families that, upon the failure of any great manufactory, immediately fall upon the parish, — Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes 971151

The lower classes of people in Europe may at some future period
be much better instructed than they are at present; they may be taught
to employ the little spare time they have in many better ways than at
the ale-house; they may live under better and more equal laws than they
have ever hitherto done, perhaps, in any country; and I even conceive it
possible, though not probable that they may have more leisure; but it is
not in the nature of things that they can be awarded such a quantity of
money or subsistence as will allow them all to marry early, in the full
confidence that they shall be able to provide with ease for a numerous
family. — Thomas Robert Malthus