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

Tags: parenthood antinatalism



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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

Tags: life death antinatalism conception



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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

Tags: life pessimism death antinatalism



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I could have done even better, miss, and I'd know a lot more, if it wasn't for my destiny ever since childhood. I'd have killed a man in a duel with a pistol for calling me low-born, because I came from Stinking Lizaveta without a father, and they were shoving that in my face in Moscow. It spread there thanks to Grigory Vasilievich. Grigory Vasilievich reproaches me for rebelling against my nativity: 'You opened her matrix,' he says. I don't know about her matrix, but I'd have let them kill me in the womb, so as not to come out into the world at all, miss.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Tags: life death class antinatalism



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It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one's germ into the future as though sperm contains your consciousness!

Irvin D. Yalom

Tags: life future children immortality antinatalism procreation



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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

Tags: antinatalism disgust horror-of-life



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Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?

John Milton

Tags: antinatalism



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Tis but a day we sojourn here below,
And all the gain we get is grief and woe,
Then, leaving our life's riddles all unsolved,
And burdened with regrets, we have to go.

Omar Khayyám

Tags: futility antinatalism



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