25 quotes
Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio, Subsistence, increases only in an arithmetical ratio.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
The greatest talents have been frequently misapplied and have produced evil proportionate to the extent of their powers.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
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.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
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.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
Persons almost entirely unacquainted with the powers of a machine, cannot be expected to guess at its effects.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
I happen to have a very bad fit of the tooth-ache at the time I am writing this.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
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.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
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.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
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.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
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.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
Man cannot live in the midst of plenty.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
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.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
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.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
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.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
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.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)
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.
An Essay on The Principle of Population (1798)