Thomas Malthus Quotes

Population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a geometrical ratio.

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.

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.

Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.

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

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.

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.

The population forecast for the United States in 1970 is 170 million. The population forecast for Russia alone in 1970 is 251 million. The implications are clear.

The rate of population growth in the United States is slightly below that required to reproduce itself.

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.

We all worry about the population explosion, but we don't worry about it at the right time.

There is a statistic I heard a number of years ago: if you know somebody who is 85 years old, that person was born into a world that had a third as many people as the world does today. The population has tripled in the past 85 years.

It's human nature to keep doing something as long as it's pleasurable and you can succeed at it - which is why the world population continues to double every 40 years.

When I was born, there were three billion people on the planet.

In only 37 years, our population will grow by a number equivalent to all the people in the world at the beginning of World War II.

How shall we dispose of our surplus millions? Our small country can hardly find room within its narrow boundaries to accommodate its yearly increase of half a million people. We cannot kill them wholesale, nor can we fill up the Sea of Japan and make dry land of it for them to settle on. We would like to go to Kansas, or anywhere but Hades, where we could escape starvation. But however hospitable America may be, she refuses to receive so many newcomers all at once. We would wish very much to cross over to Australia; but that is a White Man's Land, and although the continent is many times larger than Korea and very thinly populated, no coloured people are admitted there. We know that Korea is thickly populated, but there the least resistance is offered, and so we go there

For if we can remove the turbulent Gallics [French], our people according to exactest computations, will in another century, become even more numerous than England itself.

Malthusian famine scenarios have systematically distracted attention from the fact that it is not people’s reproductive habits that are the principal source of most of the misuse or waste of the world’s resources, but the contradictions and motives of capitalist development.

So far, the United States knows nothing of the difficulties of over-population; and historic realities of a nature to hamper the free play of economic forces exist only in a very limited degree. Quite the reverse is true in Europe.

If allowed to continue, the population will increase by 12 million—two more Scotlands—in 20 years. That’s huge.

We are going to strangle ourselves in our own growth.

As a global community, we have to start thinking more seriously about whether there are limits to what our earth can bear and if we're willing to cope with the struggle for limited resources, which only seem to increase as our population does.

The world must be peopled!