Quote

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

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
Term
Suppose
Oracles
Every
Popular
Provoked
Always
Population
Interpreter
Never
Expectations
Sustained
Series
Doom
Based
Infinitely
Short
Trends
Interpreters
Beyond
Fulfilled
Fraught

More quotes by 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
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.
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
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 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
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
Malthus married in 1804 and beat three children with his wife
Thomas Malthus
Image
The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.
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
No limits whatever are placed to the productions of the earth they may increase forever.
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
Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity.
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
To minds of a certain cast there is nothing so captivating as simplification and generalization.
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
To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.
Thomas Malthus
Image
Population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a geometrical ratio.
Thomas Malthus
Image
It is not the most pleasant employment to spend eight hours a day in a counting house.
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 power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.
Thomas Malthus