Thomas Robert Malthus - Man Quotes

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

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
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
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
The love of independence is a sentiment that surely none would wish to see erased from the breast of man, though the parish law of England, it must be confessed, is a system of all others the most calculated gradually to weaken this sentiment, and in the end may eradicate it completely.

Thomas Robert Malthus
The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other vist the human race.

Thomas Robert Malthus
A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At Nature's mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him.

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

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
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
If I saw a glass of wine repeatedly presented to a man, and he took no notice of it, I should be apt to think that he was blind or uncivil. A juster philosophy might teach me rather to think that my eyes deceived me, and that the offer was not really what I conceived it to be.

Thomas Robert Malthus