Quotessence
Home / Authors / Keijo Kangur

Keijo Kangur Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllAntinatalismPessimismAlcoholAlcoholismBad TasteBeerBibleBrainwashingChildrenConformity

Famous Keijo Kangur Quotes

“A school’s purpose wasn’t to enlighten anybody or to make them into a critical thinker. Schools existed only to train people for jobs, dulling their ability for critical thinking in the process, so that they could readily accept authority and mindless routine. In fact, when I read about the history of the school system that was commonly used in the world, I discovered that it came from the Middle Ages and was originally designed to teach people religion. And what did religious people do? They accepted absurd ideas without questioning. The same system that was designed to brainwash them—full of rote learning, non-questioning, conformity, and punishment—was the same one that was still being used today. Why? Because it worked. At least most of the time. For some reason, it hadn’t worked on me.”

SchoolReligionConformityMiddle AgesBrainwashingSchool System
Book:The Nihilist
Create image

“During this time of almost continuous despair, I often told Morrigan about my recurring fantasy: breaking up with her (or vice versa), quitting my job, moving to some cheap, shitty little one-room apartment in Mustamäe, staying isolated indoors for months on end, eating only canned beans, drinking copious amounts of red wine, talking to cockroaches, and slowly going insane—until one day, inspired by Philipp Mainländer, I’d build a pedestal out of copies of my novel and hang myself from the ceiling.”

DespairPhilipp Mainländer
Book:Broken: Twenty Pieces
Create image

“I’d often found it funny how the only reason that writers of self-help books were rich and famous was because of selling their self-help books. Whereas, if there was any truth to these books, the person would have to be rich and famous before writing the book and even then the advice in it would be subjective at best. But then people were stupid. And bad taste, as Bukowski said, created many more millionaires than good taste. If you wanted a good example of people’s bad taste, all you needed to do was to consider the most popular book of all time—the Bible.”

Self HelpBibleHypocrisyFraudBad Taste
Book:The Nihilist
Create image

“Goddamn I hated waiting. Waiting for a bus. Waiting for a train. Waiting for a taxi. Waiting for a plane. Waiting to get to a destination. Waiting for something interesting to happen. Some people tolerated the waiting; I didn’t. And when something finally happened, it was rarely as good as you expected it to be because you had made it seem much better in your head while you were waiting. Moreover, since we tended to borrow joy from the future in order to make the present more palatable, this made the already unlikely future even less enjoyable when it arrived. If it ever did.”

WaitingExpectations
Book:I Hate Traveling
Create image

“There was also the church where my aunt’s funeral had been held. I remembered standing over her open casket and looking at her lifeless body. She had looked so peaceful. Although it was a great tragedy for the people at the funeral that she was gone, some of them even openly weeping over her, in truth, death was only a tragedy to those left behind. For her, all her problems were over. For the people weeping over her, something valuable had been taken from their life without their consent. Their tears were born from selfishness.”

DeathTearsSelfishnessFuneralAntinatalism
Book:The Nihilist
Create image

“The reason I despised families with many children in particular was because each child they forced into the world tended to force even more, as did each subsequent generation, which resulted in an exponential growth of new human beings, none of whom asked to be born. As the philosopher David Benatar has pointed out, assuming each couple has three children, their total descendants over ten generations amount to 88,572 new people. Now that’s a lot of unnecessary human beings! A lot of unnecessary pain and suffering! A lot of unnecessary British tourists!”

ChildrenAntinatalism
Book:I Hate Traveling
Create image

“For various reasons—a lack of success in life, insufficient education, too much introspection, too little love from mother and father, that damned Ligotti book, and a hundred other things—I began to sink deeper and deeper into despondency and pessimism. Reality itself seemed to take on a darker hue, as everywhere I looked, I saw only futility, idiocy, and the utter pointlessness of modern life, especially mine.”

PessimismModern LifePointlessnessLigotti
Book:Broken: Twenty Pieces
Create image

“It was 42 degrees outside. It was hell on earth. Naturally, once we got inside the cafe, I immediately ordered a cold beer. The waitress had the kind of facial expression that said, “Kill me, please.” Which I liked for I could relate with it. What I didn’t like were waitresses that gave you that big old American bullshit smile, that fake smile. Fuck that; being a waitress sucks ass. Especially in the middle of nowhere for low pay. So why the fuck were they supposed to treat you like royalty?”

BeerSouth AfricaWaitressHot Weather
Book:Heaven and Hell: South Africa
Create image

“Her reaction had not been unusual. Anti-natalism—the idea that humans should not breed—was not a popular view. Not even amongst most green freaks. This despite the fact that all the troubles that existed in the world existed solely because of human beings. Despite the obviousness of this idea, admitting this to the average person was like confessing to a murder. Even in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where all that existed was misery and squalor, humans, in their never-ending capacity for delirium, would without a doubt still continue bringing new people into this world instead of realizing that doing so was both cruel and insane. That was how strongly the delusion that life was good was embedded into us. It had to be since otherwise there wouldn’t be any humans around. Life was like a pyramid scheme that had to be constantly shoved down the throats of new victims in order to keep the scam going.”

LifePessimismDeliriumAntinatalismPyramid Scheme
Book:The Nihilist
Create image