Quotes & Sayings About Malthus

I do not know that any writer has supposed that on this earth man will ultimately be able to live without food. — Thomas Malthus

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

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

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

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

Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. — Thomas Malthus

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. — Thomas Malthus

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

The most baleful mischiefs may be expected from the unmanly conduct of not daring to face truth because it is unpleasing. — Thomas Malthus

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

The perpetual tendency of the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one of the general laws of animated nature, which we can have no reason to expect to change. — Thomas Malthus

The great and unlooked for discoveries that have taken place of late years have all concurred to lead many men into the opinion that we were touching on a period big with the most important changes. — Thomas Malthus

The world's population will multiply more rapidly than the available food supply. — Thomas Malthus

MALTHUSIAN, adj. Pertaining to Malthus and his doctrines, who believed in artificially limiting population, but found that it could not be done by talking. Herod of Judea, all the famous soldiers have been practical exponents of the Malthusian idea. — Ambrose Bierce

It is also very important to observe, that menial servants are absolutely necessary to make the resources of the higher and middle classes of society efficient in the demand for material products. — Thomas Malthus

It may at first appear strange, but I believe it is true, that I cannot by means of money raise a poor man and enable him to live much better than he did before, without proportionably depressing others in the same class. — Thomas Malthus

The superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice. — Thomas Malthus

Population trends have always provoked doom-fraught oracles, because their popular interpreters suppose that every new series will be infinitely sustained; yet, beyond the short term, expectations based on them are never fulfilled. — Thomas Malthus

The proposition of Mr. Ricardo, which states that a rise in the price of labour lowers the price of a large class of commodities, has undoubtedly a very paradoxical air; but it is, nevertheless, true, and the appearance of paradox would vanish, if it were stated more naturally and correctly. — Thomas Malthus

It has been said, and perhaps with truth, that the conclusions of Political Economy partake more of the certainty of the stricter sciences than those of most of the other branches of human knowledge. — Thomas Malthus

THERE is scarcely any inquiry more curious, or, from its importance, more worthy of attention, than that which traces the causes which practically check the progress of wealth in different countries, and stop it, or make it proceed very slowly, while the power of production remains comparatively undiminished, or at least would furnish the means of a great and abundant increase of produce and population. — Thomas Malthus

In prosperous times the mercantile classes often realize fortunes, which go far towards securing them against the future; but unfortunately the working classes, though they share in the general prosperity, do not share in it so largely as in the general adversity. — Thomas Malthus

It has appeared that from the inevitable laws of our nature, some human beings must suffer from want. These are the unhappy persons who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn a blank. — Thomas Malthus

The immediate cause of the increase of population is the excess of the births above deaths; and the rate of increase, or the period of doubling, depends upon the proportion which the excess of the births above the deaths bears to the population. — Thomas Malthus

Population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a geometrical ratio. — Thomas Malthus

Man cannot live in the midst of plenty. — Thomas Malthus

To minds of a certain cast there is nothing so captivating as simplification and generalization. — Thomas Malthus

Malthus argued a century and a half ago that man, by using up all his available resources, would forever press on the limits of subsistence, thus condemning humanity to an indefinite future of misery and poverty. We can now begin to hope and, I believe, know that Malthus was expressing not a law of nature, but merely the limitation then of scientific and social wisdom. The truth or falsity of his prediction will depend now, with the tools we have, on our own actions, now and in the years to come. — John F. Kennedy

Adam Smith and Malthus and Ricardo ! There is something about these three figures to evoke more than ordinary sentiments from us their children in the spirit. — John Maynard Keynes

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

When Hume and Adam Smith prophesied that a little increase of national debt beyond the then amount of it, would probably occasion bankruptcy; the main cause of their error was the natural one, of not being able to see the vast increase of productive power to which the nation would subsequently obtain. — Thomas Malthus

In foreign policy, a modest acceptance of fate will often lead to discipline rather than indifference. The realization that we cannot always have our way is the basis of a mature outlook that rests on an ancient sensibility, for tragedy is not the triumph of evil over good so much as triumph of one good over another that causes suffering. Awareness of that fact leads to a sturdy morality grounded in fear as well as in hope. The moral benefits of fear bring us to two English philosophers who, like Machiavelli, have for centuries disturbed people of goodwill: Hobbes and Malthus. — Robert D. Kaplan

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

The histories of mankind are histories only of the higher classes. — Thomas Malthus

In 1860, sixty-three per cent of the couples married in Great Britain had families of four or more children; in 1925 only twenty per cent had more than four. — Thomas Malthus

To remedy the frequent distresses of the common people, the poor laws of England have been instituted; but it is to be feared that though they may have alleviated a little the intensity of individual misfortune, they have spread the general evil over a much larger surface. — Thomas Malthus

It is a mere futile process to exchange one set of commodities for another, if the parties; after this new distribution of goods has taken place, are not better off than they were before. — Thomas Malthus

We've already had Malthus, the friend of humanity. But the friend of humanity with shaky moral principles is the devourer of humanity, to say nothing of his conceit; for, wound the vanity of any one of these numerous friends of humanity, and he's ready to set fire to the world out of petty revenge - like all the rest of us, though, in that, to be fair; like myself, vilest of all, for I might well be the first to bring the fuel and run away myself. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil. — Thomas Malthus

everything is appropriated? — Thomas Robert Malthus

The mathematics of Malthus? A quick Internet search led him to information about a prominent nineteenth-century English mathematician and demographist named Thomas Robert Malthus, who had famously predicted an eventual global collapse due to overpopulation. — Dan Brown

Nature herself in times of great poverty or bad climatic conditions, as well as poor harvest, intervenes to restrict the increase of population of certain countries or races; this, to be sure, by a method as wise as it is ruthless. — Thomas Malthus

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

Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state. — Thomas Malthus

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

It is not the most pleasant employment to spend eight hours a day in a counting house. — Thomas Malthus

The science of political economy is essentially practical, and applicable to the common business of human life. There are few branches of human knowledge where false views may do more harm, or just views more good. — Thomas Malthus

Hard as it may appear in individual cases, dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful. — Thomas Malthus

The greatest talents have been frequently misapplied and have produced evil proportionate to the extent of their powers. Both reason and revelation seem to assure us that such minds will be condemned to eternal death, but while on earth, these vicious instruments performed their part in the great mass of impressions, by the disgust and abhorrence which they excited. — Thomas Malthus

The finest minds seem to be formed rather by efforts at original thinking, by endeavours to form new combinations, and to discover new truths, than by passively receiving the impressions of other men's ideas. — Thomas Malthus

Malthus has been buried many times, and Malthusian scarcity with him. But as Garrett Hardin remarked, anyone who has to be reburied so often cannot be entirely dead. — Herman E. Daly

The friend of the present order of things condemns all political speculations in the gross. — Thomas Malthus

If it be taught that all who are born have a right to support on the land, whatever be their number, and that there is no occasion to exercise any prudence in the affair of marriage so as to check this number, the temptations, according to all the known principles of human nature, will inevitably be yielded to, and more and more will gradually become dependent on parish assistance. — Thomas Malthus

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

The prodigious waste of human life occasioned by this perpetual struggle for room and food, was more than supplied by the mighty power of population, acting, in some degree, unshackled, from the constant habit of emigration. — Thomas Malthus

The perpetual struggle for room and food. — Thomas Malthus

To estimate the value of Newton's discoveries, or the delight communicated by Shakespeare and Milton, by the price at which their works have sold, would be but a poor measure of the degree in which they have elevated and enchanted their country; nor would it be less grovelling and incongruous to estimate the benefit which the country has derived from the Revolution of 1688, by the pay of the soldiers, and all other payments concerned in effecting it. — Thomas Malthus

Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity. — Thomas Malthus

If a country can only be rich by running a successful race for low wages, I should be disposed to say at once, perish such riches! — Thomas Malthus

The constant effort towards population, which is found even in the most vicious societies, increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. — Thomas Malthus

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

The main peculiarity which distinguishes man from other animals is the means of his support-the power which he possesses of very greatly increasing these means. — Thomas Malthus

The first business of philosophy is to account for things as they are; and till our theories will do this, they ought not to be the ground of any practical conclusion. — Thomas Malthus

Malthus's school was in the centre of the town of Adrianople, and was not one of those monkish schools where education is miserably limited to the bread and water of the Holy Scriptures. Bread is good and water is good, but the bodily malnutrition that may be observed in prisoners or poor peasants who are reduced to this diet has its counterpart in the spiritual malnutrition of certain clerics. These can recite the genealogy of King David of the Jews as far back as Deucalion's Flood, and behind the Flood to Adam, without a mistake, or can repeat whole chapters of the Epistles of Saint Paul as fluently as if they were poems written in metre; but in all other respects are as ignorant as fish or birds. — Robert Graves

Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world. — Thomas Malthus

The exertions that men find it necessary to make, in order to support themselves or families, frequently awaken faculties that might otherwise have lain for ever dormant, and it has been commonly remarked that new and extraordinary situations generally create minds adequate to grapple with the difficulties in which they are involved. — Thomas Malthus

In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where pure and simple manners prevailed, the increase of the human species would evidently be much greater than any increase that has been hitherto known. — Thomas Malthus

The passion between the sexes has appeared in every age to be so nearly the same, that it may always be considered, in algebraic language as a given quantity. — Thomas Malthus

The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years. — Thomas Malthus

With regard to the duration of human life, there does not appear to have existed from the earliest ages of the world to the present moment the smallest permanent symptom or indication of increasing prolongation. — Thomas Malthus

From Pastor Malthus to the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth; from hysteria over DDT, PCBs, and natural gas "fracking"; to continuing bouts of chemo-phobia and population panic; the achievements of capitalism have suffered a long series of detractions. The factitious and febrile campaign against global warming is only the latest binge of self-abuse among the children of prosperity. — George Gilder

A great emigration necessarily implies unhappiness of some kind or other in the country that is deserted. — Thomas Malthus

The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. — Thomas Malthus

If one fourth of the capital of a country were suddenly destroyed, or entirely transferred to a different part of the world, without any other cause occurring of a diminished demand for commodities, this scantiness of capital would certainly occasion great inconvenience to consumers, and great distress among the working classes; but it would be attended with great advantages to the remaining capitalists. — Thomas Malthus

The advances of agricultural and contraceptive technology in the nineteenth century apparently refuted Malthus: in England, the United States, Germany, and France the food supply kept pace with births, and the rising standard of living deferred the age of marriage and lowered the size of the family. — Will Durant

I think it will be found that experience, the true source and foundation of all knowledge, invariably confirms its truth. — Thomas Malthus

It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment. — Thomas Malthus

The moon is not kept in her orbit round the earth, nor the earth in her orbit round the sun, by a force that varies merely in the inverse ratio of the squares of the distances. — Thomas Malthus

No limits whatever are placed to the productions of the earth; they may increase forever. — Thomas Malthus

The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. — Thomas Malthus

The most effectual encouragement to population is, the activity of industry, and the consequent multiplication of the national products. — Thomas Malthus

Marx called Darwin a plagiarist and Malthus a fraud. Now all Marxists are Malthusian Darwinists. — A.E. Samaan

A writer may tell me that he thinks man will ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him. — Thomas Malthus

Thirty or forty proprietors, with incomes answering to between one thousand and five thousand a year, would create a much more effectual demand for the necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life, than a single proprietor possessing a hundred thousand a year. — Thomas Malthus

The rich, by unfair combinations, contribute frequently to prolong a season of distress among the poor. — Thomas Malthus

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

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

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

As agonizing a disease as cancer is, I do not think it can be said that our civilization is threatened by it ... But a very plausible case can be made that our civilization is fundamentally threatened by the lack of adequate fertility control. Exponential increases of population will dominate any arithmetic increases, even those brought about by heroic technological initiatives, in the availability of food and resources, as Malthus long ago realized. — Carl Sagan

The most successful supporters of tyranny are without doubt those general declaimers who attribute the distresses of the poor, and almost all evils to which society is subject, to human institutions and the iniquity of governments. — Thomas Malthus

The natural inequality of the two powers of population and of production in the earth, and that great law of our nature which must constantly keep their efforts equal, form the great difficulty that to me appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society. — Thomas Malthus

On the whole it may be observed, that the specific use of a body of unproductive consumers, is to give encouragement to wealth by maintaining such a balance between produce and consumption as will give the greatest exchangeable value to the results of the national industry. — Thomas Malthus

Malthus married in 1804 and beat three children with his wife — Thomas Malthus

In general it may be said that demand is quite as necessary to the increase of capital as the increase of capital is to demand. — Thomas Malthus

Each pursues his own theory, little solicitous to correct or improve it by an attention to what is advanced by his opponents. — Thomas Malthus

If I saw a glass of wine repeatedly presented to a man, and he took no notice of it, I should be apt to think that he was blind or uncivil. A juster philosophy might teach me rather to think that my eyes deceived me, and that the offer was not really what I conceived it to be. — Thomas Malthus

Where there are few people, and a great quantity of fertile land, the power of the earth to afford a yearly increase of food may be compared to a great reservoir of water, supplied by a moderate stream. The faster population increases, the more help will be got to draw off the water, and consequently an increasing quantity will be taken every year. But the sooner, undoubtedly, will the reservoir be exhausted, and the streams only remain. — Thomas Malthus

The transfer of three shillings and sixpence a day to every labourer would not increase the quantity of meat in the country. There is not at present enough for all to have a decent share. What would then be the consequence? — Thomas Malthus

Where are we to look for the consumption required but among the unproductive labourers of Adam Smith? ... — Thomas Malthus

The redundant population, necessarily occasioned by the prevalence of early marriages, must be repressed by occasional famines, and by the custom of exposing children, which, in times of distress, is probably more frequent than is ever acknowledged to Europeans. — Thomas Malthus