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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.

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
May
Harm
Human
Views
Humans
Economy
Applicable
Good
Knowledge
Essentially
Life
Common
Practicals
Business
Branches
Science
Practical
Political
False

More quotes by Thomas Malthus

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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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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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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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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
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No limits whatever are placed to the productions of the earth they may increase forever.
Thomas Malthus
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Hard as it may appear in individual instances , dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful.
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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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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 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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Population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a geometrical ratio.
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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.
Thomas Malthus
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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.
Thomas Malthus
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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.
Thomas Malthus
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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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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
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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.
Thomas Malthus
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To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.
Thomas Malthus
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The perpetual struggle for room and food.
Thomas Malthus
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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.
Thomas Malthus
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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.
Thomas Malthus