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

Thomas Malthus

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Thomas Malthus
Age: 68 †
Born: 1766
Born: February 14
Died: 1834
Died: December 23
Anglican Priest
Demographer
Economist
Essayist
Mathematician
Scientist
Sociologist
Statistician
Warwickshire
England
Thomas R. Malthus
Men
Indefinitely
Subsistence
Population
Produce
Economy
Greater
Power
Earth

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A great emigration necessarily implies unhappiness of some kind or other in the country that is deserted.
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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.
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It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment.
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It is not the most pleasant employment to spend eight hours a day in a counting house.
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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.
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No limits whatever are placed to the productions of the earth they may increase forever.
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To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.
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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.
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The doctrine of population has been conspicuously absent, not because I doubt in the least its truth and vast importance, but because it forms no part of the direct problem of economics.
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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.
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To minds of a certain cast there is nothing so captivating as simplification and generalization.
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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.
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The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.
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The friend of the present order of things condemns all political speculations in the gross.
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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.
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Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.
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