Quote

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

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
Another
Commodity
Place
Exchange
Better
Parties
Goods
Mere
Taken
Commodities
Party
Futile
Process
Distribution

More quotes by 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
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 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
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.
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
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.
Thomas Malthus
Image
No limits whatever are placed to the productions of the earth they may increase forever.
Thomas Malthus
Image
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.
Thomas Malthus
Image
Hard as it may appear in individual instances , dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful.
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
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
Image
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.
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 friend of the present order of things condemns all political speculations in the gross.
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
To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.
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 superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice.
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
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