Thomas Malthus

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

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

A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is.

The great and only effectual check to a redundant population in every country is the difficulty of procuring subsistence.

Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce food for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.

The increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence.

Moral restraint, that is, the restraint from marriage from prudential considerations, with a conduct strictly moral during the period of this restraint.

The tendency to a redundant population is in all countries a most powerful cause of poverty.

The happiness of a country does not depend, absolutely, upon its poverty or its riches, upon its youth or its age, upon its being thinly or fully inhabited, but upon the rapidity with which it is increasing, upon the degree in which the yearly increase of food approaches to the yearly increase of an unrestricted population.

The first great difficulty, then, is to provide for the poor, and to prevent the increase of their numbers.

The desire of the sexes is a passion which is deeply implanted in nature, and, in a state of society, is one of the principal causes of the increase of population.

The great question is, whether man can by any efforts of reason, make the produce of the earth keep pace with the increase of the population.

The natural tendency of the human race is to increase beyond the means of subsistence.

The principal checks to population are vice and misery.

The power of population is so great, that it cannot be repressed without producing misery or vice.

The theory of population is a theory of the causes of poverty.

The ultimate check to population is the want of food.

The world is not a garden of Eden, but a field which requires cultivation.

The tendency of population to increase beyond the means of subsistence is a constant cause of distress.

The laws of nature are the laws of God.