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Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes
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Whether the law of marriage be instituted or not, the dictate of nature and virtue seems to be an early attachment to one woman.
Thomas Robert Malthus
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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 Robert Malthus
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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 Robert Malthus
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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 Robert Malthus
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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
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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
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I think it will be found that experience,
the true source and foundation of all knowledge,
invariably confirms its truth.
Thomas Robert Malthus
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The friend of the present order of things condemns all political speculations in the gross.
Thomas Robert Malthus
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.
Thomas Robert Malthus
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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
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The histories of mankind that we possess are histories only of the higher class.
Thomas Robert Malthus
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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
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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
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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
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It is not the most pleasant employment to spend eight hours a day in a counting house.
Thomas Robert Malthus
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Thomas Robert Malthus
Creative Commons
Born:
February 13, 1766
Died:
December 29, 1834
(aged 68)
Bio:
The Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus was an English cleric and scholar, influential in the fields of political economy and demography. Malthus himself used only his middle name Robert.
Known for:
An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)
Definitions in political economy (1827)
On the Principle of Population
Most used words:
power
classes
increase
population
country
human
man
poor
produce
earth
general
society
demand
life
food
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