An Essay on the Principle of Population

“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

“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 aconviction that they are really in the picture, and not from a jaundicedeye or an inherent spleen of disposition.””

— T. R. Malthus

“man as he really is, inert, sluggish, and averse from labour, unless compelled by necessity””

— T. R. Malthus

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

— T. R. Malthus

“any great interference with the affairs of other people is a species of tyranny,””

— T. R. Malthus

“Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.””

— T. R. Malthus

“nothing is so easy as to find fault with human institutions; nothing so difficult as to suggest adequate practical improvements.””

— T. R. Malthus

“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.””

— T. R. 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.””

— T. R. Malthus