Antinatalism Quotes

One naive pro-natalist assumption is that because death is a bad thing, procreation, which can be considered the antonym of death is a god thing, but the naive defect in that assumption is that it ignores the obvious fact that procreation is an essential (and the ultimate cause) of death ~ Jiwoon Hwang

If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood? ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

The bigger the family, the bigger the number of corpses it owes life. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

There is a further (non-distributional) consideration that can affect an assessment of a life's quality. Arguably, once a life reaches a certain threshold of badness (considering both the amount and the distribution of its badness), no quantity of good can outweigh it, because no amount of good could be worth that badness. It is just this assessment that Donald ('Dax') Cowart made of his own life - or at least of that part of his life following a gas explosion that burnt two-thirds of his body. He refused extremely painful, life-saving treatment, but the doctors ignored his wishes and treated him nonetheless. His life was saved, he achieved considerable success, and he reattained a satisfactory quality of life. Yet, he continued to maintain that these post-burn goods were not worth the costs of enduring the treatments to which he was subjected. No matter how much good followed his recovery, this could not
outweigh, at least in his own assessment, the bad of the burns and treatment that he experienced. ~ David Benatar

I saw the tears of the oppressed
and they have no comforter;
power was on the side of their oppressors
and they have no comforter.
And I declared that the dead,
who had already died,
are happier than the living,
who are still alive.
But better than both
is the one who has never been born,
who has not seen the evil
that is done under the sun. ~ Anonymous

Here I've been living along, year after year, forty of them behind me, with a wife and children, and not a soul in the world to talk to. Come moments when I think I just have to pour out my soul to somebody, to say all there is to say, and - no one to say it to! If you tell it to her - the wife, that is - it don't reach her. What's it to her? She's got her children, the house, her cares. She's outside my soul. Your wife's your friend till the first baby comes ... that's how it is. And in general, my wife - well, you can see for yourself - no fun with her - just a lump of flesh, damn it all! Ah, brother, what a heartache! ~ Maxim Gorky

Parents have a child, and in doing so they bring into the world a monster that kills everything it comes in contact with. ~ Thomas Bernhard

It is not only the ratio of pleasure to pain that determines the quality of a life, but also the sheer quantity of pain. Once a certain threshold of pain is passed, no amount of pleasure can compensate for it. ~ David Benatar

It is impossible to bring a child into this world for its own sake. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

As a movement (rather than a preference), the goal of antinatalism is that no humans should have children. What ambassadors, then, are we to send to the Brazilian Amazonian Pirahã people to persuade them to stop reproducing? According, at least, to Professor Daniel Everett, here is a people who have no knowledge of regret, depression or suicide. Are we to enlighten them in order to appease a group of discontented intellectuals in the first world? The Pirahã would appear to be one pocket of humanity to whom the sickness unto death does not apply, and this reveals a crack, which may grow, in the antinatalist edifice. ~ Quentin S. Crisp

Of my conception I know only what you know of yours. It occurred in darkness and I was unconsenting ... By some bleak alchemy what had been mere unbeing becomes death when life is mingled with it. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Life may be scary
But it's only temporary.
And this is perhaps the most comforting conclusion to be reached if one discounts the possibility of meaning.

from: Antinatalism A Thought Experiment ~ Quentin S. Crisp

In countless cases, parenthood has been the worst attempt to contribute something positive to the world. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Many of us are failed secret attempts to keep our parents together. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Not having children derives not from dislike, but from love too great to bring them into this world, too limited, too vain, too cruel. ~ Michel Onfray

The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence. ~ Gustave Flaubert

The mother instinct is something of which I am completely devoid. I explain it like this to myself: life is a vale of tears and all human beings are miserable creatures, so I cannot take the responsibility for bringing yet another unhappy creature into the world. ~ Etty Hillesum

He seriously thought that there is less harm in killing a man than producing a child: in the first case you are relieving someone of life, not his whole life but a half or a quarter or a hundredth part of that existence that is going to finish, that would finish without you; but as for the second, he would say, are you not responsible to him for all the tears he will shed, from the cradle to the grave? Without you he would never have been born, and why is he born? For your amusement, not for his, that's for sure; to carry your name, the name of a fool, I'll be bound – you may as well write that name on some wall; why do you need a man to bear the burden of three or four letters? ~ Gustave Flaubert

We celebrate life and mourn death. Yet life create death, and death create life. Every cradle is a grave. Why not celebrate death and mourn life? ~ Pelle Skogsberg

A pregnant woman is a frightful object. A new-born child is loathsome. A deathbed rarely makes so horrible an impression as childbirth, that terrible symphony of screams and filth and blood. ~ Hjalmar Soderberg

The argument that coming into existence is always a harm can be summarized as follows: Both good and bad things happen only to those who exist. However, there is a crucial asymmetry between the good and the bad things. The absence of bad things, such as pain, is good even if there is nobody to enjoy that good, whereas the absence of good things, such as pleasure, is bad only if there is somebody who is deprived of these good things. The implication of this is that the avoidance of the bad by never existing is a real advantage over existence, whereas the loss of certain goods by not existing is not a real disadvantage over never existing. ~ David Benatar

Killing a person does not lead to nearly as much pain as creating a human being. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A man will come forth, who before all other men has dared to strip his soul naked and give himself wholly over to our most profound questioning, even to the idea of annihilation. A man who has grasped life in its cosmic context, and whose agony is the agony of the world. But such a rising wail will assail him from all the people of the earth, crying for his thousandfold execution, when his voice blankets the world like a shroud, and his peculiar message is heard for the first and last time:
The life on many worlds is like a rushing river, but the life on this world is like a stagnant puddle and a backwater.The mark of annihilation is written on thy brow. How long will ye mill about on the edge? But there is one victory and one crown, and one salvation and one answer: Know thyselves; be unfruitful and let there be peace on Earth after thy passing. ~ Peter Wessel Zapffe

Free Shoes

The pairs of shoes stand in rows,
polished and jet, like coffins for small pets,
lined with off-white. Evacuated children
sit in rows eyeing the pairs, child after
child after child, no parents
anywhere near. When it's their turn,
they get a pair of new shoes
and the old ones are taken away.

Of course it is kind of the nice people
to give them the shoes. Of course it is better
to be here in the country, not there where the buildings
explode and hurl down pieces of children.
Of course, of course. This life that has been
given them like a task! This life, this
black bright narrow unbroken-in shoe. ~ Sharon Olds

This is not to offer a general recommendation of suicide. Suicide, like death from other causes, makes the lives of those who are bereaved much worse. Rushing into one's own suicide can have profound negative impact on the lives of those close to one. Although an Epicurean may be committed to not caring about what
happens after his death, it is still the case that the bereaved suffer a harm even if the deceased does not. That suicide harms those who are thereby bereaved is part of the tragedy of coming into existence. We find ourselves in a kind of trap. We have already come into existence. To end our existence causes immense pain to those we love and for whom we care. Potential procreators would do well to consider this trap they lay when they produce offspring. ~ David Benatar