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.Collection: Equality
The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.Collection: Power
I do not know that any writer has supposed that on this earth man will ultimately be able to live without food.Collection: Food
I think it will be found that experience, the true source and foundation of all knowledge, invariably confirms its truth.Collection: Knowledge
Population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a geometrical ratio.Collection: Environmental
A writer may tell me that he thinks man will ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him.
The histories of mankind are histories only of the higher classes.
The superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice.
It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment.
Each pursues his own theory, little solicitous to correct or improve it by an attention to what is advanced by his opponents.
The rich, by unfair combinations, contribute frequently to prolong a season of distress among the poor.
The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.
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.
The friend of the present order of things condemns all political speculations in the gross.
No limits whatever are placed to the productions of the earth; they may increase forever.
A great emigration necessarily implies unhappiness of some kind or other in the country that is deserted.
Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
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.
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.
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: Men
The world's population will multiply more rapidly than the available food supply.Collection: Population
Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.Collection: Science
Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity.Collection: Evil
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.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Wise
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.Collection: Law
The labouring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole whole attention, and they seldom think of the future. Even when they have an opportunity of saving they seldom exercise it, but all that is beyond their present neccessities goes, generally speaking, to the ale house.Collection: Exercise
The most baleful mischiefs may be expected from the unmanly conduct of not daring to face truth because it is unpleasing.Collection: Courage
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.Collection: Successful
A feather will weigh down a scale when there is nothing in the opposite one.Collection: Opposites
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.Collection: Mean
Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Depressing
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?Collection: Country
Malthus married in 1804 and beat three children with his wifeCollection: Children
It does not, however, seem impossible that by an attention to breed, a certain degree of improvement, similar to that among animals, might take place among men. Whether intellect could be communicated may be a matter of doubt: but size, strength, beauty, complexion, and perhaps even longevity are in a degree transmissible... As the human race could not be improved in this way, without condemning all the bad specimens to celibacy, it is not probable, that an attention to breed should ever become general.Collection: Men
To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Country
The doctrine of population has been conspicuously absent, not because I doubt in the least its truth and vast importance, but because it forms no part of the direct problem of economics.Collection: Doubt
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.Collection: Years
Man cannot live in the midst of plenty.Collection: Men
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!Collection: Running
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.Collection: Errors
It accords with the most liberal spirit of philosophy to suppose that not a stone can fall, or a plant rise, without the immediate agency of divine power.Collection: Philosophy
No state has hitherto existed (at least that we have any account of) ... that no check whatever has existed to early marriages, among the lower classes, from a fear of not providing well for their families, or among the higher classes, from a fear of lowering their condition in life.Collection: Class
The most effectual encouragement to population is, the activity of industry, and the consequent multiplication of the national products.Collection: Encouragement
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.Collection: Age
Every endeavor should be used to weaken and destroy all those institutions relating to corporations, apprenticeships, &c, which cause the labours of agriculture to be worse paid than the labours of trade and manufactures.Collection: Agriculture