"Malthusian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The reflection you have suggested is enough to indicate the fallacy of the whole Malthusian theory of the increase of population on which this objection to better social conditions was founded. Malthus, as you know, held that population tended to increase faster than means of subsistence, and ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... place) even Mr. Ricardo did not see the whole extent of his misconception: thus much, however, was plain, that the meaning of Mr. Malthus was, that the new doctrine of value allowed for wages, but did not allow for profits; and thus, according to the Malthusian terminology, expressed the cost but not the value of a thing. What was Mr. Ricardo's answer? In the third edition of his book (p. 46), he told Mr. Malthus that, if the word "cost" were understood in any sense which excluded ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... for ages been multiplying under the blessing of God, and loving one another, long before that marvellous discovery was made that man, sprung from a monkey, and bred in struggle for existence, is destined at last, under fine progress of species, to become brutalized with Malthusian law as a cannibal living on the flesh of his brother, with self-respect and scientific charity in most abundant supply and demand. Tolstoy came to proclaim not the new gospel of death, but the old gospel of life; not the new gospel of struggle for existence, but the old gospel of helpfulness ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... our prototype is no favourite with the ladies. PUNCH is (and we reluctantly admit the fact) a Malthusian in principle, and somewhat of a domestic tyrant; for his conduct is at times harsh and ungentlemanly to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... century is the increased skill of the midwife and physician, who are now able to preserve worthless lives and to bring up semi-abortions whose only effect upon the breed is increased degeneracy. Amongst the Greeks and ancient Arabs the Malthusian practice was carried to excess. Poseidippus ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... all through the eighteenth century, while it was falling off in the neighbouring provinces of France. The worthy intendant thought the people sadly wanting in 'intelligence, activity, and practical sense,' and seems indeed, like a Malthusian before Malthus, half-inclined to attribute the phenomena of increase and multiplication in Artois to these defects. It would surprise him, I fancy, to look on the people and the land of Artois to-day. The land has become one of the most ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... mother who were able to send six sturdy, native-born sons to the conflict were regarded as benefactors of the nation. But these six sturdy sons had been, some twenty years before, six "puling infants," viewed with gloomy disapproval by the Malthusian bachelor. If the strength of the nation lies in its men and women there is only one way to increase it. Before the war it was thought that a simpler and easier method of increase could be found in the wholesale import of Austrians, Bulgarians ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... the height of folly for a labouring man living in a cottage with only two small bedrooms and earning twelve shillings a week to burden himself with a family of from ten to a dozen. Three or four children he considered enough for anybody. At the same time he perceived that the Neo-Malthusian system might be abused—that is to say, rich persons who could well afford to bring up respectable-sized families might be tempted to restrict the number to one or two. [535] Consequently, in the Terminal Essay to the Arabian Nights, we find him recommending ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... the latter to negotiate with Mrs. Coo for a seat in Parliament, instead of a wedding-ring; and Pacific to talk of the probable prospects of the nuptial state to Miss Polecon, who is an inveterate spinster and a political economist, professing the Malthusian creed. Rivet finding Fanny and her friend are taking business out of his hands by planning an elopement en amateur, gets himself "regularly called in," and manages to save Woodpecker all the trouble, by contriving that Whistleborough shall run ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... mainly as regards France—revolutionary. It is a passionate gospel of "Cultivate both gardens! Produce every ounce of food that can be raised to eat, and every child that can be got to eat it:" an anti-Malthusian and Cobbettist Apocalypse, smeared with Zolaesque grime and lighted up with flashes, or rather flares, of more than Zolaesque brilliancy. The scene where the hero (so far as there is one) looks back on Paris at night, and his tottering virtue sees in it one enormous theatre of Lubricity, has something ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Pertaining to Malthus and his doctrines. Malthus believed in artificially limiting population, but found that it could not be done by talking. One of the most practical exponents of the Malthusian idea was Herod of Judea, though all the famous soldiers have been of the same ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the comfortable assurance, that man, even upon Leviathan Hobbess theory of society, is no worse than the rest of creation, since all Nature is at war, one species with another, and the nearer kindred the more internecine—bringing in thousandfold confirmation and extension of the Malthusian doctrine that population tends far to outrun means of subsistence throughout the animal and vegetable world, and has to be kept down by sharp preventive checks; so that not more than one of a hundred or a thousand of the individuals whose existence is so wonderfully ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... words of Mr. Malthus,—'Que la mesure de la Subsistance est celle de la Population;'—beats the bushes in every direction about it; and yet (with the exception of one corollary on the supposed depopulating tendency of war and famine) deduces from it none but erroneous and Anti-Malthusian doctrines. That from a truth apparently so barren any corollaries were deducible—was reserved for Mr. Malthus to show. As corollaries, it may be supposed that they imply a logical act of the understanding. In some small degree, no doubt; ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey |
