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I happen to have a very bad fit of the tooth-ache at the time I am writing this.
Thomas Robert Malthus
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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
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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
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A feather will weigh down a scale when there is nothing in the opposite one.
Thomas Robert Malthus
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The most baleful mischiefs may be expected from the unmanly conduct of not daring to face truth because it is unpleasing.
Thomas Robert Malthus
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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 Robert Malthus
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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 Robert Malthus
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... where are we to look for the consumption required but among the unproductive labourers of Adam Smith?...
Thomas Robert Malthus
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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 Robert Malthus
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It cannot be true, therefore, that among animals some of the offspring will possess the desirable qualities of the parents in greater degree, or that animals are indefinitely perfectible.
Thomas Robert Malthus
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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
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Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity.
Thomas Robert Malthus
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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 Robert Malthus
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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
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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 Robert Malthus
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It is quite obvious therefore, that the knowledge and prudence of the poor themselves, are absolutely the only means by which any general and permanent improvement in their condition can be effected. They are really the arbiters of their own destiny; and what others can do for themselves. These truths are so important to the happiness of the great mass of society, that every opportunity should be taken of repeating them.
Thomas Robert Malthus
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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 Robert Malthus
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Every exchange which takes place in a country, effects a distribution of its produce better adapted to the wants of society.
Thomas Robert Malthus
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The rich, by unfair combinations, contribute frequently to prolong a season of distress among the poor.
Thomas Robert Malthus
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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
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Quote of the day
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
Faith Baldwin
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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