Thomas Malthus
Thomas Malthus
The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus FRS was an English cleric and scholar, influential in the fields of political economy and demography. Malthus himself used only his middle name Robert...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth14 February 1766
Thomas Malthus quotes about
asks beings bring cannot career means provide reason whether whom
Reason interrupts man's career and asks him whether he may not bring beings into the world for whom he cannot provide the means of subsistence.
higher histories mankind possess
The histories of mankind that we possess are histories only of the higher classes.
afterwards effects increase power repressed room wherever
Wherever there is liberty, the power of increase is exerted, and the superabundant effects are repressed afterwards by want of room and nourishment.
littles attention opponents
Each pursues his own theory, little solicitous to correct or improve it by an attention to what is advanced by his opponents.
science numbers ratios
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.
food mean science
[P]opulation, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio. ... [T]he means of subsistence, under circumstances the most favorable to human industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio.
population world food-supply
The world's population will multiply more rapidly than the available food supply.
struggle acting emigration
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.
unhappy-person law suffering
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.
evil temptation virtue
The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.
vices population misery
The superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice.
taken years land
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.
country class different
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.
encouragement giving balance
On the whole it may be observed, that the specific use of a body of unproductive consumers, is to give encouragement to wealth by maintaining such a balance between produce and consumption as will give the greatest exchangeable value to the results of the national industry.