Thomas Malthus Quotes - Page 2

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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 Malthus

Attention, Opponents, Littles

Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population and Other Writings”, p.44, Penguin UK

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In 1860, sixty-three per cent of the couples married in Great Britain had families of four or more children; in 1925 only twenty per cent had more than four.

Thomas Malthus

Children, Couple, Twenties

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The passion between the sexes has appeared in every age to be so nearly the same, that it may always be considered, in algebraic language as a given quantity.

Thomas Malthus

Sex, Passion, Age

Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population: Illustrated”, p.62, eKitap Projesi

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Thirty or forty proprietors, with incomes answering to between one thousand and five thousand a year, would create a much more effectual demand for the necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life, than a single proprietor possessing a hundred thousand a year.

Thomas Malthus

Years, Luxury, Demand

Thomas Robert Malthus (1836). “Principles of political economy considered with a view to their practical application”, p.374

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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 Malthus

Men, Earth, Able

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

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Malthus married in 1804 and beat three children with his wife

Thomas Malthus

Children, Wife, Three

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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.

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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

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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

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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 Malthus

Law, People, Evil

Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population: Illustrated”, p.40, eKitap Projesi

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It does not, however, seem impossible that by an attention to breed, a certain degree of improvement, similar to that among animals, might take place among men. Whether intellect could be communicated may be a matter of doubt: but size, strength, beauty, complexion, and perhaps even longevity are in a degree transmissible... As the human race could not be improved in this way, without condemning all the bad specimens to celibacy, it is not probable, that an attention to breed should ever become general.

Thomas Malthus

Men, Animal, Eugenics

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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

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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 Malthus

Attachment, Law, Virtue

Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population: Illustrated”, p.16, eKitap Projesi

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In prosperous times the mercantile classes often realize fortunes, which go far towards securing them against the future; but unfortunately the working classes, though they share in the general prosperity, do not share in it so largely as in the general adversity.

Thomas Malthus

Adversity, Class, Realizing

"Principles of political economy considered with a view to their practical application". Book by Thomas Robert Malthus, Book II, Chapter I, "On The Progress of Wealth", Section X, p. 437, 1836.

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The immediate cause of the increase of population is the excess of the births above deaths; and the rate of increase, or the period of doubling, depends upon the proportion which the excess of the births above the deaths bears to the population.

Thomas Malthus

Population, Excess, Causes

THOMAS MALTHUS, JULIAN HUXLEY, FREDERICK OSBORN (1960). “ON POPULATION THREE ESSAYS”

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Population trends have always provoked doom-fraught oracles, because their popular interpreters suppose that every new series will be infinitely sustained; yet, beyond the short term, expectations based on them are never fulfilled.

Thomas Malthus

Expectations, Trends, Population

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The natural inequality of the two powers of population and of production in the earth, and that great law of our nature which must constantly keep their efforts equal, form the great difficulty that to me appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society.

Thomas Malthus

Law, Two, Effort

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

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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 Malthus

Men, Thinking, Ideas

Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population and Other Writings”, p.171, Penguin UK

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Capitals accumulate faster than population

Thomas Malthus

Population, Faster

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Man cannot live in the midst of plenty.

Thomas Malthus

Men, Midst, Plenty

Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population: Illustrated”, p.83, eKitap Projesi

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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 Malthus

Life, Struggle, Science

Thomas Robert Malthus (1959). “Population: The First Essay”, p.17, University of Michigan Press

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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 Malthus

Exercise, Land, Numbers

Thomas Robert Malthus (1817). “An Essay on the Principle of Population: Or, A View of Its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness; with an Inquiry Into Our Prospects Respecting the Future Removal Or Mitigation of the Evils which it Occasions”, p.380

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The constant effort towards population, which is found even in the most vicious societies, increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased.

Thomas Malthus

Mean, Numbers, People

Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population and Other Writings”, p.52, Penguin UK

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

Thomas Malthus

Country, Emigration, Kind

Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population and Other Writings”, p.51, Penguin UK

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When Hume and Adam Smith prophesied that a little increase of national debt beyond the then amount of it, would probably occasion bankruptcy; the main cause of their error was the natural one, of not being able to see the vast increase of productive power to which the nation would subsequently obtain.

Thomas Malthus

Errors, Able, Causes

Thomas Robert Malthus “An Essay on the Principle of Population, Or, a View of Its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness: With an Inquiry Into Our Prospects Respecting the Future Removal Or Mitigation of the Evils which it Occasions”, Cambridge University Press

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Born: February 14, 1766
Died: December 23, 1834
Occupation: Scholar
Cite this Page: Citation

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