Thomas Robert Malthus - On the Principle of Population

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

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

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

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 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
The lower classes of people in Europe may at some future period be much better instructed then they are at present; they may be taught to employ the little spare time they have in many better ways than at the ale-house; they may live under better and more equal laws than they have hitherto done, perhaps, in any country; and I even conceive it possible, though not probable, that they may have more leisure; but it is not in the nature of things, that they can be awarded such a quantity of money or substance, as will allow them all to marry early, in the full confidence that they shall be able to provide with ease for a numerous family.

Thomas Robert Malthus
The greatest talents have been frequently misapplied and have produced evil proportionate to the extent of their powers. Both reason and revelation seem to assure us that such minds will be condemned to eternal death, but while on earth, these vicious instruments performed their part in the great mass of impressions, by the disgust and abhorrence which they excited.

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
It has appeared that from the inevitable laws of our nature, some human beings must suffer from want. These are the unhappy persons who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn a blank.

Thomas Robert Malthus
The transfer of three shillings and sixpence a day to every labourer would not increase the quantity of meat in the country. There is not at present enough for all to have a decent share. What would then be the consequence?

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

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

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
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
No state has hitherto existed (at least that we have any account of)... that no check whatever has existed to early marriages, among the lower classes, from a fear of not providing well for their families, or among the higher classes, from a fear of lowering their condition in life.

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

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

Thomas Robert Malthus
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
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
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
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
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
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 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