Quotessence
Home / Topics / Antinatalism Quotes

Antinatalism Quotes

Browse 36 quotes about Antinatalism.

Antinatalism Quotes

“What foolishness it is to desire more life, after one has tasted A bit of it and seen the world; for each day, after each endless day, Piles up ever more misery into a mound. As for pleasures: once we Have passed youth they vanish away, never again to be seen. Death is the end of all. Never to be born is the best thing. To have seen the daylight And be swept instantly back into dark oblivion comes second.”

PhilosophyEmotional PainEmoSophoclesAntinatalismNonexistence
Book:Oedipus at Colonus
Create image

“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.”

PhilosophyExistenceAntinatalism
Book:Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence
Create image

“Or what The evil for us, if we had ne'er been born?— As though, forsooth, in darkling realms and woe Our life were lying till should dawn at last The day-spring of creation! Whosoever Hath been begotten wills perforce to stay In life, so long as fond delight detains; But whoso ne'er hath tasted love of life, And ne'er was in the count of living things, What hurts it him that he was never born?”

BirthLife And LivingAntinatalismAntinatalistAntinatalismoBetter Never To Have BeenI Wish I Wasn T Bornজন মদ নব র ধ
Book:OF THE NATURE OF THINGS
Create image

“X maintains we are at the end of a "cosmic cycle" and that soon everything will fall apart. And he does not doubt this for one moment. At the same time, he is the father of a--numerous--family. With certitudes like his, what aberration has deluded him into bringing into a doomed world one child after the next? If we foresee the End, if we are sure it will be coming soon, if we even anticipate it, better to do so alone. One does not procreate on Patmos.”

SufferingPessimismAntinatalismAnti NatalismAntinatalistChild FreePatmos
Book:The Trouble with Being Born
Create image

“Mr. Reese had told him that life, at its core, was a cruel burden because we had the knowledge that we were born to die. We were born with innocent eyes and those eyes had to see pain and death and deceit and violence and heartache. If we were lucky we lived long enough to see most everything we love die. But, he said, being honorable and truthful took a little of the sting out of it. It made life bearable. Mr. Reese said liars and cowards were the worst people to know because they broke your heart in a world that is built to break your heart. They poured gas on an already cruel and barely controllable fire.”

LifeSufferingAntinatalism
Book:Don't Skip Out on Me
Create image

“What misery! and all these girls, broken by fatigue, were silly enough to come here at night and make babies, more flesh to toil and suffer! It would never end while they went on getting themselves filled with starvelings.Ought they rather not stop up their wombs and close their thighs tight against approaching disaster? But then, perhaps he was only harbouring these dismal thoughts because he resented being alone, when all the others were pairing off to take their pleasure.”

LonelinessAntinatalismSlave Morality
Book:Germinal
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

“A premature death does not only rob one of the countless instances where one would have experienced pleasure, it also saves one from the innumerable instances where one would have experienced pain.”

HumorFunnyPainDeathJoySufferingQuotesEnjoyHurtPleasureWorryDyingHumourAnxietyHumorousStressQuoteProfoundPhilosopherQuote Of The DayWorriedImmortalityEnjoymentThoughtfulSatireImmortalThought ProvokingMortalityDeepInsightfulFuneralAnxiousAphorismDeadSouth AfricaDepressingQuotationsAfricaMaximsSayingsAdagesProverbsAphorismsMake You ThinkAxiomsEulogyCoffinsWorryingAdageLamentRobbersProverbPrematureSatiricalSayingEpigramsHurtingSufferRobbingAfricanQuotationGnomeSatiristMaximEpigramGnomesProvoke ThoughtMade Me ThinkAxiomDictumDictumsMortalCasketsSouth AfricanFuneralsPleasuresCoffinSatiristsAntinatalismPremature DeathDepressRobCasketRobbedRobberEulogiesAntinatalistLamentsAntinatalistsPremature Deaths
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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

“And when I think my thinking rouses me to blame he who created me, And I gave peace to my children for they are in the bliss of the abyss Which surpasses all the pleasures of the world, And had they been born they would’ve endured misery”

ParentsPessimismChildfreeAntinatalism
Book:The Quatrains of Abu'l-Ala: Selected From His "Lozum-Ma-La-Yalzam" And "Sact-Uz-Zind" And Now First Translated Into English
Create image

“Viewed from a wholly logical point of view the bearing and rearing of children is a thoroughly unattractive proposition. To a woman it means pain and endless worry. To a man it means extra work extending over many years to support his family. So, if we were wholly logical about sex, we should probably not bother to reproduce at all. Nature takes care of this by making us utterly and wholly irrational.”

PhilosophySexAntinatalism
Book:The Black Cloud
Create image

“Life doesn’t begin with meaning, purpose or planning. It begins with sex, the most brilliantly executed con in evolutionary history. If reproduction required a logical argument, the human species would have ended in the Stone Age.”

PhilosophyExistentialismConsentAntinatalismAbolitionismMeaningoflifeAntiprocreationEthicsofbirthHumanconditionReproductiveethics
Book:LIFE: AN EXPOSÉ: Why Sentience Was a Terrible Idea
Create image

“But on the ground in modern day, the gap-toothed border wall on the U.S. side was in the advanced stages of decay. It was an unsightly, rusted monstrosity, thoughtlessly imposing itself through the cacti masses who, until a few decades ago, had been peacefully congregating for millions of years along what was now an arbitrary line begging to be taken seriously.”

AntinatalismHuman Rights QuotesGlobal CitizenshipOpen BordersAnti NationalismGlobal Citizenship QuotesBorderless WorldFree MigrationFreedom Of MovementUs Mexico Border
Book:The Subtle Cause
Create image

“The well-worn track was as straight as Gadsden’s ruler when the nineteenth-century U.S. diplomat had negotiated yet another strong-armed acquisition of Mexican territory to give Arizona its geometrically pleasing southern boundary. Pleasing on paper, anyway.”

AntinatalismHuman Rights QuotesGlobal CitizenshipOpen BordersAnti NationalismGlobal Citizenship QuotesBorderless WorldFree MigrationFreedom Of MovementUs Mexico Border
Book:The Subtle Cause
Create image

“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.”

WestColonialismAntinatalismModernity Is A Sickness
Author:Quentin S. Crisp
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