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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.

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
Animal
Peculiarity
Support
Distinguishes
Means
Possesses
Power
Greatly
Mean
Increasing
Men
Main
Animals
Economy

More quotes by Thomas Malthus

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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.
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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.
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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.
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The science of political economy is essentially practical, and applicable to the common business of human life. There are few branches of human knowledge where false views may do more harm, or just views more good.
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Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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Malthus married in 1804 and beat three children with his wife
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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.
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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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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.
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Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.
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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.
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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 most baleful mischiefs may be expected from the unmanly conduct of not daring to face truth because it is unpleasing.
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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 feather will weigh down a scale when there is nothing in the opposite one.
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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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