Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes

80 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Thomas Robert Malthus
But, fortunately for mankind, the neat rents of the land, under a system of private property, can never be diminished by the progress of cultivation.

Thomas Robert 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 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 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
I feel no doubt whatever that the parish laws of England have contributed to raise the price of provisions and to lower the real price of labour.

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

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

Thomas Robert Malthus
The histories of mankind that we possess are histories only of the higher class.

Thomas Robert 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 Robert Malthus
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.

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 not the most pleasant employment to spend eight hours a day in a counting house.

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

Thomas Robert Malthus
The employment of the poor in roads and public works, and a tendency among landlords and persons of property to build, to improve and beautify their grounds, and to employ workmen and menial servants, are the means most within our power and most directly calculated to remedy the evils arising from that disturbance in the balance of produce and consumption.

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
A feather will weigh down a scale when there is nothing in the opposite one.

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 Robert 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 Robert Malthus
Yet in all societies, even those that are most vicious, the tendency to a virtuous attachment is so strong that there is a constant effort towards an increase of population. This constant effort as constantly tends to subject the lower classes of the society to distress and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition.

Thomas Robert Malthus
Though I may not be able to in the present instance to mark the limit at which further improvement will stop, I can very easily mention a point at which it will not arrive.

Thomas Robert 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 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