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To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of 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
Beyond
Power
Men
Recurrence
Alas
Prevent
Misery

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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 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?
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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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A great emigration necessarily implies unhappiness of some kind or other in the country that is deserted.
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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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It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment.
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In general it may be said that demand is quite as necessary to the increase of capital as the increase of capital is to demand.
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The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.
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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.
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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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A feather will weigh down a scale when there is nothing in the opposite one.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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The perpetual struggle for room and food.
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