Quote

To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.

Thomas Malthus

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Recurrence
Alas
Prevent
Misery
Beyond
Power
Men

More quotes by Thomas Malthus

Image
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.
Thomas Malthus
Image
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
Image
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.
Thomas Malthus
Image
The perpetual struggle for room and food.
Thomas Malthus
Image
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
Image
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.
Thomas Malthus
Image
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
Image
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.
Thomas Malthus
Image
If a country can only be rich by running a successful race for low wages, I should be disposed to say at once, perish such riches!
Thomas Malthus
Image
Hard as it may appear in individual instances , dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful.
Thomas Malthus
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The first business of philosophy is to account for things as they are and till our theories will do this, they ought not to be the ground of any practical conclusion.
Thomas Malthus
Image
It has been said, and perhaps with truth, that the conclusions of Political Economy partake more of the certainty of the stricter sciences than those of most of the other branches of human knowledge.
Thomas Malthus
Image
I do not know that any writer has supposed that on this earth man will ultimately be able to live without food.
Thomas Malthus
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Thomas Malthus
Image
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.
Thomas Malthus
Image
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