Thomas Robert Malthus > Quotes

“The constancy of the laws of nature, or the certainty with which we may expect the same effects from the same causes, is the foundation of the faculty of reason.”
― T.R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population

“The view which he has given of human life has a melancholy hue,
but he feels conscious that he has drawn these dark tints from a
conviction that they are really in the picture, and not from a jaundiced
eye or an inherent spleen of disposition.”
― Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population

“man as he really is, inert, sluggish, and averse from labour, unless compelled by necessity”
― T.R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population

“Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity”
― Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population

“any great interference with the affairs of other people is a species of tyranny,”
― T. R. (Thomas Robert) Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population

“Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.”
― T. R. (Thomas Robert) Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population

“nothing is so easy as to find fault with human institutions; nothing so difficult as to suggest adequate practical improvements.”
― T. R. (Thomas Robert) Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population

“The constant effort towards population, which is found to act even in the most vicious societies, increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. The food therefore which before supported seven millions must now be divided among seven millions and a half or eight millions. The poor consequently must live much worse, and many of them be reduced to severe distress. The number of labourers also being above the proportion of the work in the market, the price of labour must tend toward a decrease, while the price of provisions would at the same time tend to rise. The labourer therefore must work harder to earn the same as he did before. During this season of distress, the discouragements to marriage, and the difficulty of rearing a family are so great that population is at a stand. In the mean time the cheapness of labour, the plenty of labourers, and the necessity of an increased industry amongst them, encourage cultivators to employ more labour upon their land, to turn up fresh soil, and to manure and improve more completely what is already in tillage, till ultimately the means of subsistence become in the same proportion to the population as at the period from which we set out. The situation of the labourer being then again tolerably comfortable, the restraints to population are in some degree loosened, and the same retrograde and progressive movements with respect to happiness are repeated.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population

“[H]ow am I to communicate this truth to a person who has scarcely ever felt intellectual pleasure? I may as well attempt to explain the nature and beauty of colours to a blind man. […] There is no common measure between us.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus

“everything is appropriated?”
― T.R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population

“I should be inclined, therefore, as I have hinted before, to consider the world and this life as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mind, a process necessary to awaken inert, chaotic matter into spirit, to sublimate the dust of the earth into soul, to elicit an ethereal spark from the clod of clay. And in this view of the subject, the various impressions and excitements which man receives through life may be considered as the forming hand of his Creator, acting by general laws, and awakening his sluggish existence, by the animating touches of the Divinity, into a capacity of superior enjoyment. The original sin of man is the torpor and corruption of the chaotic matter in which he may be said to be born.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus

“The finest minds seem to be formed rather by efforts at original thinking, by endeavours to form new combinations, and to discover new truths, than by passively receiving the impressions of other men's ideas.”
― Thomas Malthus, An essay on the principle of population

“The greatest talents have been frequently misapplied and have produced evil proportionate to the extent of their powers.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population

“El obrero que se casa sin poder mantener a su familia puede ser considerado, en cierta medida, como enemigo de todos sus compañeros.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus, Primer ensayo sobre la población

“The vices and moral weakness of man are not invincible: Man is perfectible, or in other words, susceptible of perpetual improvement.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population

“Man cannot live in the midst of plenty. All cannot share alike the bounties of nature. Were there no established administration of property, every man would be obliged to guard with force his little store. Selfishness would be triumphant. The subjects of contention would be perpetual. Every individual mind would be under a constant anxiety about corporal support, and not a single intellect would be left free to expatiate in the field of thought.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus

“as long as a
great number of those impressions which form character, like the nice
motions of the arm, remain absolutely independent of the will of man,
though it would be the height of folly and presumption to attempt to
calculate the relative proportions of virtue and vice at the future periods
of the world, it may be safely asserted that the vices and moral
weakness of mankind, taken in the mass, are invincible.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population

“No person can deny the importance of improving the happiness of the human species. Every the least advance in this respect is highly valuable. But an experiment with the human race is not like an experiment upon inanimate objects. The bursting of a flower may be a trifle. Another will soon succeed it. But the bursting of the bonds of society is such a separation of parts as cannot take place without giving the most acute pain to thousands: and a long time may elapse, and much misery may be endured, before the wound grows up again.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus

“One principal reason is that the histories of mankind that we possess are histories only of the higher classes. We have but few accounts that can be depended upon of the manners and customs of that part of mankind where these retrograde and progressive movements chiefly take place.”
― T. R. (Thomas Robert) Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population

“The lower classes of people in Europe may at some future period
be much better instructed than they are at present; they may be taught
to employ the little spare time they have in many better ways than at
the ale-house; they may live under better and more equal laws than they
have ever hitherto done, perhaps, in any country; and I even conceive it
possible, though not probable that they may have more leisure; but it is
not in the nature of things that they can be awarded such a quantity of
money or subsistence as will allow them all to marry early, in the full
confidence that they shall be able to provide with ease for a numerous
family.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population

“we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavouring to impede, the operations of nature, in producing this mortality”
― Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay On the Principle of Population, As It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, Volumen i

“It is the lot of man, that he will frequently have to choose between two evils; and it is a sufficient reason for the adoption of any institution, that it is the best mode that suggests itself of preventing greater evils. A continual endeavour should undoubtedly prevail to make these institutions as perfect as the nature of them will admit. But nothing is so easy as to find fault with human institutions; nothing so difficult as to suggest adequate practical improvements. It is to be lamented, that more men of talents employ their time in the former occupation than in the latter.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population - Vol. 1

“All that I can say is, that the wisest and best men in all ages had agreed in giving the preference, very greatly, to the pleasures of intellect; and that my own experience completely confirmed the truth of their decisions; that I had found sensual pleasures vain, transient, and continually attended with tedium and disgust; but that intellectual pleasures appeared to me ever fresh and young, filled up all my hours satisfactorily, gave a new zest to life, and diffused a lasting serenity over my mind”
― Thomas Robert Malthus

“If men are induced to marry from a prospect of parish provision, with little or no chance of maintaining their families in independence, they are not only unjustly tempted to bring unhappiness and dependence upon themselves and children, but they are tempted, without knowing it, to injure all in the same class with themselves. A labourer who marries without being able to support a family may in some respects be considered as an enemy to all his fellow-labourers.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus

“...the being that has seen moral evil and has felt disapprobation and disgust at it is essentially different from the being that has seen only good. They are pieces of clay that have received distinct impressions: they must, therefore, necessarily be in different shapes; or, even if we allow them both to have the same lovely form of virtue, it must be acknowledged that one has undergone the further process, necessary to give firmness and durability to its substance, while the other is still exposed to injury, and liable to be broken by every accidental impulse. An ardent love and admiration of virtue seems to imply the existence of something opposite to it, and it seems highly probable that the same beauty of form and substance, the same perfection of character, could not be generated without the impressions of disapprobation which arise from the spectacle of moral evil.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus

“But in cases where the perfection of the model is a perfection of a different and superior nature from that towards which we should naturally advance, we shall not only always fail in making any progress towards it, but we shall in all probability impede the progress which we might have expected to make had we not fixed our eyes upon so perfect a model.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus

“Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity. We are not patiently to submit to it, but to exert ourselves to avoid it. It is not only the interest but the duty of every individual to use his utmost efforts to remove evil from himself and from as large a circle as he can influence, and the more he exercises himself in this duty, the more wisely he directs his efforts, and the more successful these efforts are, the more he will probably improve and exalt his own mind and the more completely does he appear to fulfil the will of his Creator.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population

“Todo aumento de la población sin incremento proporcional del alimento producirá el mismo efecto, reduciendo el valor del título de cada individuo.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus, Primer ensayo sobre la población

“Even intellectual pleasures, though certainly less liable than others to satiety, pursued with too little intermission, debilitate the body, and impair the vigour of the mind.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus

“A highly intellectual being, exempt from the infirm calls of hunger or sleep, is undoubtedly a much more perfect existence than man, but were man to attempt to copy such a model, he would not only fail in making any advances towards it; but by unwisely straining to imitate what was inimitable, he would probably destroy the little intellect which he was endeavouring to improve.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus