To minds of a certain cast there is nothing so captivating as simplification and generalization.

Nature herself in times of great poverty or bad climatic conditions, as well as poor harvest, intervenes to restrict the increase of population of certain countries or races; this, to be sure, by a method as wise as it is ruthless.

It is not the most pleasant employment to spend eight hours a day in a counting house.

The first business of philosophy is to account for things as they are; and till our theories will do this, they ought not to be the ground of any practical conclusion.

In general it may be said that demand is quite as necessary to the increase of capital as the increase of capital is to demand.

Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity.

[P]opulation, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio. ... [T]he means of subsistence, under circumstances the most favorable to human industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio.