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Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes

Thomas Robert Malthus was an English cleric, scholar and influential economist in the fields of political economy and demography.In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the populace, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the "Malthusian trap" or the "Malthusian spectre". Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want and greater susceptibility to famine and disease, a view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe. Malthus wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible.Malthus saw population growth as being inevitable whenever conditions improved, thereby precluding real progress towards a utopian society: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man". As an Anglican cleric, he saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour. Malthus wrote that "the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence"; "population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase"; and "the superior power of population is repressed by moral restraint, vice and misery".Malthus criticized the Poor Laws for leading to inflation rather than improving the well-being of the poor. He supported taxes on grain imports . His views became influential and controversial across economic, political, social and scientific thought. Pioneers of evolutionary biology read him, notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. He remains a much-debated writer. Wikipedia  

✵ 14. February 1766 – 29. December 1834
Thomas Robert Malthus photo

Works

Principles of Political Economy
Principles of Political Economy
Thomas Robert Malthus
Thomas Robert Malthus: 60   quotes 4   likes

Famous Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes

“Every exchange which takes place in a country, effects a distribution of its produce better adapted to the wants of society….”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section VIII, p. 382-383
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)
Context: Every exchange which takes place in a country, effects a distribution of its produce better adapted to the wants of society....
If two districts, one of which possessed a rich copper mine, and the other a rich tin mine, had always been separated by an impassable river or mountain, there can be no doubt that an opening of a communication, a greater demand would take place, and a greater price be given for both the tin and the copper; and this greater price of both metals, though it might be only temporary, would alone go a great way towards furnishing the additional capital wanted to supply the additional demand; and the capitals of both districts, and the products of both mines, would be increased both in quantity and value to a degree which could not have taken place without the this new distribution of the produce, or some equivalent to it.

“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 Robert Malthus

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

“There must therefore be a considerable class of persons who have both the will and power to consume more material wealth then they produce, or the mercantile classes could not continue profitably to produce so much more than they consume.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section IX, p. 400 (See also: David Ricardo and aggregate demand)
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)
Context: But such consumption is not consistent with the actual habits of the generality of capitalists. The great object of their lives is to save a fortune, both because it is their duty to make a provision for their families, and because they cannot spend an income with so much comfort to themselves, while they are obliged perhaps to attend a counting house for seven or eight hours a day...
... There must therefore be a considerable class of persons who have both the will and power to consume more material wealth then they produce, or the mercantile classes could not continue profitably to produce so much more than they consume.

“Though I may not be able to in the present instance to mark the limit at which further improvement will stop, I can very easily mention a point at which it will not arrive.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter IX, paragraph 8, lines 14-16

“To estimate the value of Newton's discoveries, or the delight communicated by Shakespeare and Milton, by the price at which their works have sold, would be but a poor measure of the degree in which they have elevated and enchanted their country; nor would it be less grovelling and incongruous to estimate the benefit which the country has derived from the Revolution of 1688, by the pay of the soldiers, and all other payments concerned in effecting it.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Chapter I, Of The Definitions of Wealth and of Productive Labour, Section II, p. 49
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“The labouring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole whole attention, and they seldom think of the future. Even when they have an opportunity of saving they seldom exercise it, but all that is beyond their present neccessities goes, generally speaking, to the ale house.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter V, paragraph 13, lines 8-13

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes about homeland

“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 Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter V, paragraph 3, lines 5-8

“If a country can only be rich by running a successful race for low wages, I should be disposed to say at once, perish such riches!”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Chapter III, Of the Rent of Land, Section IX, p. 214
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“THERE is scarcely any inquiry more curious, or, from its importance, more worthy of attention, than that which traces the causes which practically check the progress of wealth in different countries, and stop it, or make it proceed very slowly, while the power of production remains comparatively undiminished, or at least would furnish the means of a great and abundant increase of produce and population.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section I, p. 309
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavouring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. 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. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations.*12 But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders. http://www.econlib.org/library/Malthus/malPlong30.html#dd12 Book IV, Chapter V”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

“If one fourth of the capital of a country were suddenly destroyed, or entirely transferred to a different part of the world, without any other cause occurring of a diminished demand for commodities, this scantiness of capital would certainly occasion great inconvenience to consumers, and great distress among the working classes; but it would be attended with great advantages to the remaining capitalists.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section X, p. 414 (See also: Karl Marx, Capital Volume I, Chapter 25, Section 4(e), p. 742
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“The lower classes of people in Europe may at some future period be much better instructed then 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 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 substance, 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

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter XIV, paragraph 9

Thomas Robert Malthus: Trending quotes

“The greatest talents have been frequently misapplied and have produced evil proportionate to the extent of their powers.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter XIX, paragraph 2, lines 1-6
Context: The greatest talents have been frequently misapplied and have produced evil proportionate to the extent of their powers. Both reason and revelation seem to assure us that such minds will be condemned to eternal death, but while on earth, these vicious instruments performed their part in the great mass of impressions, by the disgust and abhorrence which they excited.

Evil

“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.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

World , Food

“If I saw a glass of wine repeatedly presented to a man, and he took no notice of it, I should be apt to think that he was blind or uncivil. A juster philosophy might teach me rather to think that my eyes deceived me, and that the offer was not really what I conceived it to be.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

Thinking , Wine

Thomas Robert Malthus Quotes

“It is also very important to observe, that menial servants are absolutely necessary to make the resources of the higher and middle classes of society efficient in the demand for material products.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section IX, p. 408
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“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.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter X, paragraph 29, lines 12-15

Life , Law , Nature , Suffering

“When Hume and Adam Smith prophesied that a little increase of national debt beyond the then amount of it, would probably occasion bankruptcy; the main cause of their error was the natural one, of not being able to see the vast increase of productive power to which the nation would subsequently obtain.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section X, p. 422
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Error , Nature

“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 Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section IV, p. 349 ( See also; Says Law)
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“It is quite obvious therefore, that the knowledge and prudence of the poor themselves, are absolutely the only means by which any general and permanent improvement in their condition can be effected. They are really the arbiters of their own destiny; and what others can do for themselves. These truths are so important to the happiness of the great mass of society, that every opportunity should be taken of repeating them.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Chapter V, Of the Profits of Capital, Section III, p. 279
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Truth , Knowledge , Happiness

“Not many years had elapsed after the first edition of this work, when it became known to all with whom Mr. Malthus had the opportunity of communicating on the subject, or who were acquainted with his last publications, that his opinions on the subject of value had undergone some change.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Advertisement to the Second Edition, p. vii
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Communication , Change

“The immediate cause of the increase of population is the excess of the births above deaths; and the rate of increase, or the period of doubling, depends upon the proportion which the excess of the births above the deaths bears to the population.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

Death , Birth , Dependency

“To minds of a certain cast there is nothing so captivating as simplification and generalization.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Introduction, p. 5
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter XVIII, paragraph 11, lines 16-17

Food

“The love of independence is a sentiment that surely none would wish to see erased from the breast of man, though the parish law of England, it must be confessed, is a system of all others the most calculated gradually to weaken this sentiment, and in the end may eradicate it completely.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter IV, paragraph 13, lines 11-15

Love , Law

“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 Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Introduction, p. 1
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Truth , Knowledge , Science

“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 Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section VIII, p. 384
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“No move towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes has taken place in the five or six thousand years that the world has existed.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter XI, paragraph 1, lines 6-8

World , Sex , Passion

“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 Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Introduction, p. 9
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Life , Business , Knowledge , Science

“It cannot be true, therefore, that among animals some of the offspring will possess the desirable qualities of the parents in greater degree, or that animals are indefinitely perfectible.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter IX, paragraph 9, lines 1-3

Parent , Animals , Perfection

“The proposition of Mr. Ricardo, which states that a rise in the price of labour lowers the price of a large class of commodities, has undoubtedly a very paradoxical air; but it is, nevertheless, true, and the appearance of paradox would vanish, if it were stated more naturally and correctly.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Chapter II, On the Nature, Causes, and Measures of Value, Section IV, p. 88
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Nature , Appearance

“…where are we to look for the consumption required but among the unproductive labourers of Adam Smith?…”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section IX, p. 406
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio, Subsistence, increases only in an arithmetical ratio.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter I, paragraph 18, lines 1-2

“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.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

Support , Evil , Success

“Man cannot live in the midst of plenty.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter X, paragraph 7, line 1

“It accords with the most liberal spirit of philosophy to suppose that not a stone can fall, or a plant rise, without the immediate agency of divine power.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter VII, paragraph 10, lines 8-10

“The main peculiarity which distinguishes man from other animals, is the means of his support, is the power which he possesses of very greatly increasing these means.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

Support , Animals

“To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter V, paragraph 25, lines 4-5

“I happen to have a very bad fit of the tooth-ache at the time I am writing this.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter XII, paragraph 6, lines 8-9

Time

“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 Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section IX, p. 412-413
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Wealth

“The question is, what is saving?”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Chapter I, Of The Definitions of Wealth and of Productive Labour, Section II, p. 40
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Question

“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 Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter IX, paragraph 7, lines 1-4

Life , Age , World , Appearance

“In prosperous times the mercantile classes often realize fortunes, which go far towards securing them against the future; but unfortunately the working classes, though they share in the general prosperity, do not share in it so largely as in the general adversity.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section X, p. 437
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Time , Future

“The employment of the poor in roads and public works, and a tendency among landlords and persons of property to build, to improve and beautify their grounds, and to employ workmen and menial servants, are the means most within our power and most directly calculated to remedy the evils arising from that disturbance in the balance of produce and consumption.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section X, p. 430
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Evil , Personality

“The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other vist the human race.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter VII, paragraph 20, lines 2-4

Death

“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 Robert Malthus

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

Men , Truth , Idea , Thinking

“The effect therefore on national wealth of those classes of unproductive consumers which are supported by taxation, must be very various in different countries, and must depend entirely upon the powers of production, and upon the manner in which the taxes are raised in each country.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section IX, p. 410
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Support , Dependency , Country , Wealth

“Every endeavor should be used to weaken and destroy all those institutions relating to corporations, apprenticeships, &c, which cause the labours of agriculture to be worse paid than the labours of trade and manufactures.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter V, paragraph 23, lines 3-7

“It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter I, paragraph 9, lines 1-2

Truth

“I know of no well-directed attempts of this kind, except in the ancient family of the Bickerstaffs, who are said to have been very successful in whitening the skins and increasing the height of their race by prudent marriages, particularly by that very judicious cross with Maud, the milk- maid, by which some capital defects in the constitutions of the family were corrected.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter IX, paragraph 14, lines 22-27 ( see also eugenics)

Marriage , Family , Success

“Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter XIX, paragraph 15, line 1

World , Evil , Despair

“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.”

Thomas Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter V, paragraph 2, lines 1-5

People , Fear , Law , Evil

“It is not the most pleasant employment to spend eight hours a day in a counting house.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section IX, p. 403
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Housing

“Surely then some distinction between the different kinds of labour, with reference to their different effects on national wealth, must be admitted to be not only useful, but necessary; and if so, the question is what this distinction should be, and where the line between the different kinds of labour should be drawn.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Chapter I, Of The Definitions of Wealth and of Productive Labour, Section II, p. 43
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Question , Wealth

“But, fortunately for mankind, the neat rents of the land, under a system of private property, can never be diminished by the progress of cultivation.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Chapter III, Of the Rent of Land, Section IX, p. 216
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“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 Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter V, paragraph 13, lines 1-3

Law , Feeling

“A feather will weigh down a scale when there is nothing in the opposite one.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section V, p. 355
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“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 Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Introduction, p. 8
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Business

“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 Robert Malthus

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter XIII, paragraph 2, lines 19-22

Sun

“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 Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section VII, p. 374
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Life

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