Thomas Malthus Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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 Malthus

  People, House, Crowds

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1989). “An Essay on the Principle of Population”, p.115, Cambridge University Press

  45 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Malthus

  Men, Race, Population

  Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population and Other Writings”, p.90, Penguin UK

  52 Copy quote

• The world's population will multiply more rapidly than the available food supply.

  Thomas Malthus

  Population, World, Food Supply

  55 Copy quote

• Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.

  Thomas Malthus

  Science, Numbers, Population

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1959). “Population: The First Essay”, p.5, University of Michigan Press

  46 Copy quote

• Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity.

  Thomas Malthus

  Evil, Despair, World

  Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population: Illustrated”, p.167, eKitap Projesi

  30 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Malthus

  Thinking, Foundation, Economy

  Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population: Illustrated”, p.14, eKitap Projesi

  58 Copy quote

• 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 Malthus

  Children, Eugenics, Population

  Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population and Other Writings”, p.63, Penguin UK

  33 Copy quote

• Nature herself in times of great poverty or bad climatic conditions, as well as poor harvest, intervenes to restrict the increase of population of certain countries or races; this, to be sure, by a method as wise as it is ruthless.

  Thomas Malthus

  Wise, Country, Race

  5 Copy quote

• The histories of mankind are histories only of the higher classes.

  Thomas Malthus

  Class, Economy, Mankind

  4 Copy quote

• 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 Malthus

  Exercise, Opportunity, Thinking

  Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population: Illustrated”, p.44, eKitap Projesi

  32 Copy quote

• The rich, by unfair combinations, contribute frequently to prolong a season of distress among the poor.

  Thomas Malthus

  Rich, Economy, Poor

  Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population and Other Writings”, p.55, Penguin UK

  22 Copy quote

• The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.

  Thomas Malthus

  Men, Population, Earth

  Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population and Other Writings”, p.47, Penguin UK

  20 Copy quote

• The most baleful mischiefs may be expected from the unmanly conduct of not daring to face truth because it is unpleasing.

  Thomas Malthus

  Courage, Integrity, Faces

  Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population and Other Writings”, p.159, Penguin UK

  9 Copy quote

• 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 Malthus

  Law, Unhappy Person, Suffering

  Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population and Other Writings”, p.112, Penguin UK

  4 Copy quote

• 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 Malthus

  Successful, Government, Evil

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1989). “An Essay on the Principle of Population”, p.129, Cambridge University Press

  20 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Malthus

  Opposites, Scales, Feathers

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1820). “Principles of Political Economy Considered with a View to Their Practical Application”, p.406

  10 Copy quote

• Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state.

  Thomas Malthus

  Men, Ratios, Population

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1959). “Population: The First Essay”, p.127, University of Michigan Press

  24 Copy quote

• Population regulates itself by the funds which are to employ it, and therefore always increases or diminishes with the increase or the diminution of capital. Every reduction of capital is therefore necessarily followed by a less effective demand for corn, by a fall in price, and by a diminished cultivation.

  Thomas Malthus

  Fall, Population, Demand

  3 Copy quote

• 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 Malthus

  Mean, Men, Race

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1798). “An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it Affects the Future Imporvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers”, p.346, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

  20 Copy quote

• If one fourth of the capital of a country were suddenly destroyed, or entirely transferred to a different part of the world, without any other cause occurring of a diminished demand for commodities, this scantiness of capital would certainly occasion great inconvenience to consumers, and great distress among the working classes; but it would be attended with great advantages to the remaining capitalists.

  Thomas Malthus

  Country, Class, Causes

  "Principles of political economy considered with a view to their practical application". Book by Thomas Malthus, Book II, Chapter I, "On The Progress of Wealth", Section X, p. 414, 1836.

  3 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Malthus

  Men, Thinking, Ostriches

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1959). “Population: The First Essay”, p.4, University of Michigan Press

  68 Copy quote

• To minds of a certain cast there is nothing so captivating as simplification and generalization.

  Thomas Malthus

  Mind, Captivating, Certain

  Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population and Other Writings”, p.243, Penguin UK

  11 Copy quote

• Where there are few people, and a great quantity of fertile land, the power of the earth to afford a yearly increase of food may be compared to a great reservoir of water, supplied by a moderate stream. The faster population increases, the more help will be got to draw off the water, and consequently an increasing quantity will be taken every year. But the sooner, undoubtedly, will the reservoir be exhausted, and the streams only remain.

  Thomas Malthus

  Taken, Years, Land

  Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population and Other Writings”, p.301, Penguin UK

  11 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Malthus

  Vices, Population, Misery

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1959). “Population: The First Essay”, p.13, University of Michigan Press

  6 Copy quote

• Malthus married in 1804 and beat three children with his wife

  Thomas Malthus

  Children, Wife, Three

  25 Copy quote

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