Thomas Malthus Quotes

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

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.

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.

The whole surface of our globe can afford room and support only to such a number of all sorts of creatures, and by their doubling, trebling or any other multiplication of their kind, they must starve or devour one another. The world is now well-peopled ... neither too full nor too empty and if too many the length of life will be reduced …. plague and war may be, not only a just punishment of the sins of men, but also a wise means to keep the balance of mankind even.

There's going to be competition because there are not enough resources. Resources grow arithmetically, populations grow exponentially. You can't ever have enough resources and that's the foundation of this idea of competition.

Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.

The constant effort towards population, which is found even in the most vicious societies, increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased.

The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.

The natural inequality of the two powers of population and of production in the earth, and that great law of our nature which must constantly keep their efforts equal, form the great difficulty that to me appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society.

One always returns to the fact that there are just too many of us, the population continues to rise and it's unsustainable.

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

MALTHUSIAN, adj. Pertaining to Malthus and his doctrines, who believed in artificially limiting population, but found that it could not be done by talking. Herod of Judea, all the famous soldiers have been practical exponents of the Malthusian idea.

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.

The whole action of the laws tended to increase the number of consumers of food and to diminish the number of producers, was due the invention of the Malthusian theory of population.

There are probably already too many people on the planet.

Where there is a complete manifestation of the Malthusian theory of population, friendliness develops with great difficulty to the point of active effort to relieve suffering; where further increase in population means increase in severity of the struggle for subsistence, aggressive benevolence is not likely to assume large proportions. On the contrary, when the cutting off of thousands by plague, or flood, or famine means more air to breathe and more land to cultivate for those who remain, stoic apathy is not hard to attain.

You probably need 1/10 of the world's population for us to continue to exist. There's just too many damn people. You have to somehow get us from 7 billion people to... I don't know what the magic number is, but I imagine at some point, that will happen. And I don't know about you, but I don't think I'm making the cut.

The Malthusian Theory - that mankind, for biological and sociological reasons, is so fertile, so fecund, that if you started out with the new continent and plenty of land for everybody, in several generations we would multiply our numbers.

In the last 200 years the population of our planet has grown exponentially, at a rate of 1.9% per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population doubling every 40 years, by 2600 we would all be standing literally shoulder to shoulder.

Over-population is a phenomenon connected with the survival of the unfit, and it is a mechanism which has created conditions favourable to the survival of the unfit and the elimination of the fit.

If the population curve is on an exponential growth, and the resources are on an exponential decline, what happens first is you get increases in wealth discrepancy, which means that you get rich pockets of gated communities with security guards outside them, and you get more and more poverty outside that area.

I generally avoid over-population arguments. But there's no question we're in population overshoot. The catch is we're not going to do anything about it. There will be no policy. The usual suspects: starvation, war, disease, will drive the population down. There's little more to say about that really, and it's certainly an unappetizing discussion, but it's probably the truth. In any case, we're in overshoot and we face vast resource scarcities.

People minus space equals Poverty ... What is living for? If the answer is a life of dignity, decency and opportunity, then every increase in population means a decrease in all three. The crowd is a threat to every single being.

Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.

Malthus has been buried many times, and Malthusian scarcity with him. But as Garrett Hardin remarked, anyone who has to be reburied so often cannot be entirely dead.