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Thomas Robert Malthus, né près de Guildford le 13 février 1766 et mort à Bath le 29 décembre 1834, est un économiste britannique de l'École classique, et également un prêtre anglican.

Contemporain du décollage industriel anglais, il est surtout connu pour ses travaux sur les rapports entre les dynamiques de croissance de la population et la production, analysés dans une perspective « pessimiste », totalement opposée à l'idée smithienne d'un équilibre harmonieux et stable.

Son nom a donné dans le langage courant un adjectif, « malthusien » souvent négativement connoté , et une doctrine, le malthusianisme qui inclut une politique active de contrôle de la natalité pour maîtriser la croissance de la population. Wikipedia  

✵ 14. février 1766 – 29. décembre 1834
Thomas Malthus photo
Thomas Malthus: 60   citations 0   J'aime

Thomas Malthus: Citations en anglais

“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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Thomas Robert Malthus

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

“Man cannot live in the midst of plenty.”

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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.”

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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.”

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Thomas Robert Malthus

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

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

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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.”

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Thomas Robert Malthus

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

“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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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)

“The question is, what is saving?”

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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)

“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.”

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Thomas Robert Malthus

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

“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.”

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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)

“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.”

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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)

“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.”

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Thomas Robert Malthus

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

“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.”

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Thomas Robert Malthus

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

“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.”

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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)

“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.”

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Thomas Robert Malthus

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

“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.”

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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)

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

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Thomas Robert Malthus

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

“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.”

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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)

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

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Thomas Robert Malthus

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

“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.”

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Thomas Robert Malthus

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

“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.”

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Thomas Robert Malthus

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

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

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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)

“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.”

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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)

“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.”

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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.”

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Thomas Robert Malthus

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

“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”

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Thomas Robert Malthus

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

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

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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.”

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Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

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

“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.”

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Thomas Robert Malthus

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

“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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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)

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