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
Power
Men
Recurrence
Alas
Prevent
Misery
Beyond

More quotes by Thomas Malthus

Image
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.
Thomas Malthus
Image
Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state.
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
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
A great emigration necessarily implies unhappiness of some kind or other in the country that is deserted.
Thomas Malthus
Image
Population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a geometrical ratio.
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
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
Image
Hard as it may appear in individual instances , dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful.
Thomas Malthus
Image
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
Image
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
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 most baleful mischiefs may be expected from the unmanly conduct of not daring to face truth because it is unpleasing.
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
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
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.
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
The moon is not kept in her orbit round the earth, nor the earth in her orbit round the sun, by a force that varies merely in the inverse ratio of the squares of the distances.
Thomas Malthus
Image
A feather will weigh down a scale when there is nothing in the opposite one.
Thomas Malthus