Thomas Malthus Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
More Thomas Malthus quote about:
- Children,
- Commodities,
- Country,
- Doubt,
- Earth,
- Economy,
- Effort,
- Euthanasia,
- Evil,
- House,
- Labour,
- Philosophy,
- Science,
- Virtue,
-
“I think it will be found that experience, the true source and foundation of all knowledge, invariably confirms its truth.”
-- Thomas Malthus -
“Each pursues his own theory, little solicitous to correct or improve it by an attention to what is advanced by his opponents.”
-- Thomas Malthus -
“The superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice.”
-- Thomas Malthus -
“The main peculiarity which distinguishes man from other animals is the means of his support-the power which he possesses of very greatly increasing these means.”
-- Thomas Malthus -
“A writer may tell me that he thinks man will ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him.”
-- Thomas Malthus -
“A great emigration necessarily implies unhappiness of some kind or other in the country that is deserted.”
-- Thomas 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 Malthus -
“The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.”
-- Thomas Malthus -
“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 -
“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 Malthus -
“No limits whatever are placed to the productions of the earth; they may increase forever.”
-- Thomas Malthus -
“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 Malthus -
“Population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a geometrical ratio.”
-- Thomas Malthus -
“Hard as it may appear in individual cases, dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful.”
-- Thomas Malthus -
“The rich, by unfair combinations, contribute frequently to prolong a season of distress among the poor.”
-- Thomas Malthus -
“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 -
“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 Malthus -
“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 -
“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 -
“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 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 Malthus -
“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 -
“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 -
“It is also very important to observe, that menial servants are absolutely necessary to make the resources of the higher and middle classes of society efficient in the demand for material products.”
-- Thomas Malthus -
“where are we to look for the consumption required but among the unproductive labourers of Adam Smith?...”
-- Thomas Malthus -
“It is not the most pleasant employment to spend eight hours a day in a counting house.”
-- Thomas Malthus -
“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 Malthus -
“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 -
“With regard to the duration of human life, there does not appear to have existed from the earliest ages of the world to the present moment the smallest permanent symptom or indication of increasing prolongation.”
-- Thomas Malthus