Antinatalism Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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 Dostoyevsky

A coin is examined, and only after careful deliberation, given to a beggar, whereas a child is flung out into the cosmic brutality without hesitation. — Peter Wessel Zapffe

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

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

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

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 Khayyam

Some anti-natalist positions are founded on either a dislike of children or on the interests of adults who have greater freedom and resources if they do not have and rear children. My anti-natalist view is different. It arises, not from a dislike of children, but instead from a concern to avoid the suffering of potential children and the adults they would become, even if not having those children runs counter to the interests of those who would have them. — David Benatar

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

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

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