Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes

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

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

Thomas Robert Malthus
Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.

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

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

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

Thomas Robert Malthus
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 Robert Malthus
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.

Thomas Robert 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 Robert Malthus
I know of no well-directed attempts of this kind, except in the ancient family of the Bickerstaffs, who are said to have been very successful in whitening the skins and increasing the height of their race by prudent marriages, particularly by that very judicious cross with Maud, the milk- maid, by which some capital defects in the constitutions of the family were corrected.

Thomas Robert Malthus
Every exchange which takes place in a country, effects a distribution of its produce better adapted to the wants of society.

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

Thomas Robert Malthus
To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.

Thomas Robert 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 Robert Malthus
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.

Thomas Robert Malthus
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 Robert Malthus
Not many years had elapsed after the first edition of this work, when it became known to all with whom Mr. Malthus had the opportunity of communicating on the subject, or who were acquainted with his last publications, that his opinions on the subject of value had undergone some change.

Thomas Robert Malthus
Surely then some distinction between the different kinds of labour, with reference to their different effects on national wealth, must be admitted to be not only useful, but necessary; and if so, the question is what this distinction should be, and where the line between the different kinds of labour should be drawn.

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

Thomas Robert 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 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 Robert Malthus
I happen to have a very bad fit of the tooth-ache at the time I am writing this.

Thomas Robert Malthus