Maybe this list will be useful for someone from here.
Akerma Karim
Books about antinatalism:
Soll eine Menschheit sein? Eine fundamentalethische Frage, Traude Junghans, 1995 (German language).
Verebben der Menschheit?: Neganthropie und Anthropodizee, Verlag Karl Alber, 2000 (German language).
Articles about antinatalism:
Theodicy shading off into Anthropodicy in Milton, Twain and Kant, Tabula Rasa, 2010
Seinsunwilligkeit vor dem Schleier gebürtlichen Nichtwissens Von John Rawls zu Samuel Butler, Tabula Rasa, April 2011 (German language)
Existenzgeld - Für ein nativistisches, bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen, Tabula Rasa, April 2013 (German language)
Morgenländische Niegewesenseinswünsche – eine Eloge auf Omar Chayyam, In: Tabula Rasa, May 2013 (German language)
Quotes:
''Procreation always involves pre-existing ends into which a new person fits as a means. Regarding procreation, it is not possible for us to treat non-existing future persons also as an end, whereas it is possible to conceive of them as a means. Therefore, in light of the Kantian request to always treat persons also as an end, we had rather not procreate.''
- Theodicy shading off into Anthropodicy in Milton, Twain and Kant, Tabvla Rasa, 2010, July, Ausgabe 41. -
Al-Maʿarri Abul ʿala
Quotes:
''Whenever I reflect, my reflecting upon what I suffer only rouses me to blame him that begot me. And I gave peace to my children, for they are in the bliss of nonexistence which surpasses all the pleasures of this world. Had they come to life, they would have endured a misery casting them to destruction in trackless wildernesses.''
- Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Poetry, Cambridge University Press, 1969 -
''If ye unto your sons would prove
By act how dearly them ye love
Then every voice of wisdom joins
To bid you leave them in your loins''
- Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Poetry, Cambridge University Press, 1969 -
''The rich man desires a son to inherit his wealth, but were the fathers intelligent no children would be born.''
- Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Poetry, Cambridge University Press, 1969 -
''Procreation is a sin, though not called one.''
- Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Poetry, Cambridge University Press, 1969 -
''A father wronged by his sons pays the just penalty for the crime which he committed against them.''
- Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Poetry, Cambridge University Press, 1969 -
''To beget is to increase the sum of evil.''
- Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Poetry, Cambridge University Press, 1969 -
''It is better for a people, instead of multiplying, to perish off the face of the earth.''
- Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Poetry, Cambridge University Press, 1969 -
''Refrain from procreation, for its consequence is death.''
- Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Poetry, Cambridge University Press, 1969 -
''There are many passages to the same effect, showing that Abul ʿAla regarded procreation as a sin and universal annihilation as the best hope for humanity.''
- Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs, Curzon Press, 1995 -
''Birth I chose not, nor old age, nor to live:
What the past grudged me shall the present give?
Here must I stay, by fates' two hands constrained,
And not leave until my leaving is ordained.
You who would guide me out of dark illusion,
You lie—your story contains nothing but confusion.
For can you alter that you brand with shame,
Or is it not unalterably the same? ''
- Reynold A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Poetry, Cambridge University Press, 1921 -
'' Ah, let us go, whom nature gave firm minds
And taught us to hold courage firmly fast,
To meet the fates pursuing us, that we may die at last.
The draught of life, to me it seems a bitter thing to drain;
And see, in bitter truth, we spew it out again. ''
- Reynold A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Poetry, Cambridge University Press, 1921 -
''Over many a race the sun's bright net was spread
And loosed their pearls nor left them even a thread.
This dire world delights us, though all sup—
All whom she mothers—from one mortal cup.
Choose from two ills: which rather in the main
Suits you? —to perish or to live in pain?''
- Reynold A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Poetry, Cambridge University Press, 1921 -
''My father has perpetrated this crime against me; I am guilty of none.'' (He is said to have wanted this verse inscribed over his grave.) [Other version: ''This crime my father commited against me, while I have never commited this crime against anyone.'']
Joseph Edmund Lowry, Devin J. Stewart, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2009, page 17
Sami Ayad Hanna, Arab Socialism, Brill Archive, 1969,page 257
Near East/South Asia Report, Encounter Limited, 1969, page 30
''Better for Adam and all who issued forth from his loins that he and they, yet unborn, created never had been! For whilst his body was dust and rotten bones in the earth. Ah, did he feel what his children saw and suffered of woe.''
- Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim, Prometheus Books, Prometheus Books, 1995 -
Annaba Philippe
Books about antinatalism:
Bienheureux les stériles, Presses du Midi, 2002 (French language)
Audians
Quotes:
''Because the Audians saw every part of the human body as being ruled by the seven evil powers, they rejected procreation and denied the resurrection of.''
- Roelof van den Broek, Gnostic Religion in Antiquity, Cambridge University Press, 2013 -
Benatar David
Books about antinatalism:
Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence, Oxford University Press, 2006
Articles about antinatalism:
Why it is Better Never to Come Into Existence, American Philosophical Quarterly, 1997, July, Vol. 34, No. 3, pages 345-355
Every Conceivable Harm:A Further Defence of Anti-Natalism, South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 31, No. 1, 2012, pages 128-164
Still Better Never to Have Been: A Reply to (More of) My Critics, The Journal of Ethics, October 2012
Quotes:
''It is curious that while good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place.''
- Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, Oxford University Press Inc., New York 2006, pages 6 (introduction) -
''Nor is the harm produced by the creation of a child usually restricted to that child. The child soon finds itself motivated to procreate, producing children who, in turn, develop the same desire. Thus any pair of procreators can view themselves as occupying the tip of a generational iceberg of suffering. They experience the bad in their own lives. In the ordinary course of events they will experience only some of the bad in their children’sand possibly grandchildren’s lives (because these offspring usually survive their progenitors), but beneath the surface of the current generations lurk increasingly larger numbers of descendents and their misfortunes. Assuming that each couple has three children,an original pair’s cumulative descendents over ten generations amount to 88,572 people. That constitutes a lot of pointless, avoidable suffering. To be sure, full responsibility for it all does not lie with the original couple because each new generation faces the choice of whether to continue that line of descendents. Nevertheless, they bear some responsibility for the generations that ensue. If one does not desist from having children, one can hardly expect one’s descendents to do so.''
- Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, Oxford University Press Inc., New York 2006, pages 6-7 (introduction) -
''Great suffering could await any person that is brought into existence. Even the most privileged people could give birth to a child that will suffer unbearably, be raped, assaulted, or be murdered brutally. The optimist surely bears the burden of justifying this procreational Russian roulette. Given that there are no real advantages over never existing for those who are brought into existence, it is hard to see how the significant risk of serious harm could be justified. If we count not only the unusually severe harms that anybody could endure, but also the quite routine ones of ordinary human life, then we find that matters are still worse for cheery procreators. It shows that they play Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun—aimed, of course, not at their own heads, but at those of their future offspring.''
- Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, Oxford University Press Inc., New York 2006, page 92 -
Belshaw Christopher
Articles about antinatalism:
A new argument for anti-natalism, South African Journal of Philosophy, 2012, Vol. 31, s. 117–137
Bernhard Thomas
Quotes:
''Even at the risk of being thought mad, we must not be afraid to say that our parents, like theirs before them, were guilty of the crime of procreation, which means the crime of creating unhappiness, of conspiring with others to increase the unhappiness of an increasingly unhappy world.''
- Gathering evidence: a memoir, Knopf, 1985, page 113 -
Bleibohm Gunter
Books about antinatalism:
Fluch der Geburt - Thesen einer Uberlebensethik, Edition Gegensich, 2011 (German language)
Bogomils
Quotes:
''However, one heretical doctrine mentioned by Theophylact is of a non-Paulician origin: the heretics, he writes, reject lawful marriage and maintain that the reproduction of the human species is a law of the demon. This exaggerated and distorted asceticism, essentially characteristic of Bogomilism, is a logical consequence of metaphysical dualism, according to which Matter, the product of the Evil Principle, is a source of limitation and suffering for the divinely created soul; hence marriage, as the means of reproduction of Matter, is to be condemned and avoided.''
- Dimitri Obolensky, The Bogomils: A Study in Balkan Neo-Manichaeism, Cambridge University Press 2004, page 114 -
''Since sexual reproduction perpetuated the prison of the soul, ascetic life was viewed as a key to salvation.''
- Florin Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500-1250, Cambridge University Press, 2006, page 236 -
''They rejected procreation and marriage; they despised work, riches, honours, social distinctions.''
- Jacques Lacarrière, Nina Rootes, The Gnostics, Peter Owen Ltd, 1977, page 91 (or 116) -
Cabrera Julio
Books about antinatalism:
Critica de La Moral Afirmativa: Una Reflexion Sobre Nacimiento, Muerte y Valor de La Vida, Gedisa Editorial, 1996 (Spanish language)
Porque te amo, NÃO nascerás!, LGE, 2009, co-author with Thiago Lenharo di Santis (Portuguese language)
A ÉTICA E SUAS NEGAÇÕES, Não nascer, suicídio e pequenos assassinatos, Rocco, 2011 (Portuguese language)
Quotes:
''In order to make it easy I will summarize three lines presented in my text: (1) to question the usual idea that when we make someone to born we are giving him something “valuable”; (2) To point out to the inevitable “manipulation” inherent to the act of procreate; (3) To problematize the idea that, if someone could give his opinion, he would ask us to make him born. That been said, it’s possible to understand the notion of “morality” that is been used, according to which, it’s not correct: (1) to give someone something we consider to be not valuable; (2) to manipulate him; (3) to disrespect his autonomy. I believe that those three things happen when we procreate. This philosophical result may lead many people to extend (beyond the usual) their moral scruples, or may lead them to show clearly and without any hypocrisy how unscrupulous they are willing to be, or could even lead to a refutation (by absurd) of the moral point of view about the world.''
- Porque te amo, NÃO Nascerás!, pages 23-24 -
Cassianus Julius
Quotes:
''The first is a dialogue between Jesus and Salome. She asks, "How long shall men die?" Jesus answers, "As long as you women bear children." Writers like Julius Cassianus take this as an implicit injunction to defeat death by ceasing from procreation.''
- John T. Noonan Jr., Contraception; a history of its treatment by the Catholic theologians and canonists, Harvard University Press, 1986 -
Full text of this dialogue (Greek Gospel of the Egyptians):
Salome: How long shall men die?
Jesus: As long as you women bear children.
Salome: I have done well, then, in not bearing children?
Jesus: Every plant eat thou, but that which hath bitterness eat not. I have come to destroy the works of the female.
Cathars
Quotes:
''The doctrine of Catharism opposed sexual intercourse that led to procreation because it was thought that the devil had given "seed to the children of the world."''
- Margot Joan Fromer, Ethical issues in sexuality and reproduction, Mosby, 1983, page 110 -
Ceronetti Guido
Quotes:
,,Man still dare to cause cruelties despite the fact that he already commits, calmly and time after time, an act most cruel of all: procreation, he forces beings that do not exist and do not feel pain to experience the horror of life.''
- The Silence of the Body: Materials for the Study of Medicine, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1993 (1979) -
,,The immorality of procreation praised as conscious is this: here the crime of making a man, to introduce more evil and pain in the world is not made unconsciously in ecstasy and drama in the darkness of copulation, but is coolly premeditated, people then are no longer cautious and repeat the act until they reach the goal. But there is something even worse: artificial procreation, semen ice, where without the manipulator and the belly person horrified by what they do, lacks even the delight that is some extenuating circumstance.''
- The Silence of the Body: Materials for the Study of Medicine, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1993 (1979) -
,,As long as they have the wish to kill, they will not lose the lust to procreate.''
- The Silence of the Body: Materials for the Study of Medicine, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1993 (1979) -
''If you are a friend of living, you must be an enemy of human reproduction. If you love human beings, beware of the reproduction of their.''
- Insetti senza frontiere, Adelphi, 2009 -
Cioran Emil
Quotes:
,,Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?''
- Tears and Saints, 1995 (1937) -
,,And our very being - what a mistake, what an injury to have adjoined it to existence, when we might have persevered, intact, in the virtual, the invulnerable! No-one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if ever there was one. Yet it is with the hope of being cured of it some day that we accept life and endure its ordeals. The years pass, the wound remains.''
- The Fall Into time, Quadrangle Books, 1970 (1964), page 69 -
,,It is our birth, in fact, that we must attend to if we want to extirpate the evil at its source. We take a stand against death, against what must come; birth, a much more irreparable event, we leave to one side, pay little or no attention to it: to each man it appears as far in the past as the world's first moment. Only a man who plans to suppress himself reaches back that far; it seems he cannot forget the unnamable mechanism of procreation and that he tries, by a retrospective horror, to annihilate the very seed from which he has sprung.''
- The Fall Into time, Quadrangle Books, 1970 (1964), pages 169-170 -
,,To procreate is to love the scourge - to seek to maintain and to augment it. They were right, those ancient philosophers who identified fire with the principle of the universe, and with desire, for desire burns, devours: annihilates: At once agent and destroyer of beings, it is sombre, it is infernal by essence.''
- The New Gods, University of Chicago, 2013 (1969), page 11 -
,,In the Council of 1211 against the Bogomils, those among them were anathematized who held that ,,woman conceives in her womb by the cooperation of Satan, that Satan abides there upon conception without withdrawing hence until the birth of the child.'' I dare not suppose that the Devil can be concerned with us to the point of keeping us company for so many months; but I cannot doubt that we have been conceived under his eyes and that he actually attended our beloved begetters.''
- The New Gods, University of Chicago, 2013 (1969), page 62 -
,,The disgust with the useful aspect of sexuality, the horror of procreation, constitutes part of the interrogation of the creation: what is the good of multiplying monsters?''
- The New Gods, University of Chicago, 2013 (1969), page 62 -
,,The mediocrity of my grief at funerals. Impossible to feel sorry for the deceased; conversely, every birth casts me into consternation. It is incomprehensible, it is insane that people can show a baby, that they can exhibit this potential disaster and rejoice over it.''
- The New Gods, University of Chicago, 2013 (1969), page 102 -
,,We do not rush toward death, we flee the catastrophe of birth, survivors struggling to forget it. Fear of death is merely the projection into the future of a fear which dates back to our first moment of life. We are reluctant, of course, to treat birth as a scourge: has it not been inculcated as the sovereign good-have we not been told that the worst came at the end, not at the outset of our lives? Yet evil, the real evil, is behind, not ahead of us. What escaped Jesus did not escape Buddha: "If three things did not exist in the world, disciples, the Perfect One would not appear in the world..." And ahead of old age and death he places the fact of birth, source of every infirmity, every disaster.''
- The Trouble With Being Born, Sever Books, 1976 (1973), page 4 -
,,Nothing is a better proof of how far humanity has regressed than the impossibility of finding a single nation, a single tribe, among whom birth still provokes mourning and lamentations.''
- The Trouble With Being Born, Sever Books, 1976 (1973), page 4 -
,,To have committed every crime but that of being a father.''
- The Trouble With Being Born, Sever Books, 1976 (1973), page 6 -
,,If attachment is an evil, we must look for its cause in the scandal of birth, for to be born is to be attached. Detachment then should apply itself to getting rid of the traces of this scandal, the most serious and intolerable of all.''
- The Trouble With Being Born, Sever Books, 1976 (1973), page 19 -
,,In Buddhist writings, mention is often made of "the abyss of birth". An abyss indeed, a gulf into which we do not fall but from which, instead, we emerge, to our universal chagrin.''
- The Trouble With Being Born, Sever Books, 1976 (1973), page 33 -
,,Everything is wonderfully clear if we admit that birth is a disastrous or at least an inopportune event; but if we think otherwise, we must resign ourselves to the unintelligible, or else cheat like everyone else.''
- The Trouble With Being Born, Sever Books, 1976 (1973), page 98 -
,,That faint light in each of us which dates back to before our birth, to before all births, is what must be protected if we want to rejoin that remote glory from which we shall never know why we were separated.''
- The Trouble With Being Born, Sever Books, 1976 (1973), page 157 -
,,If it is true that by death we once more become what we were before being, would it not have been better to abide by that pure possibility, not to stir from it? What use was this detour, when we might have remained forever in an unrealized plenitude?''
- The Trouble With Being Born, Sever Books, 1976 (1973), page 147 -
,,I was alone in that cemetery overlooking the village when a pregnant woman came in. I left at once, in order not to look at this corpse-bearer at dose range, nor to ruminate upon the contrast between an aggressive womb and the time-worn tombs-between a false promise and the end of all promises.''
- The Trouble With Being Born, Sever Books, 1976 (1973), page 151 -
,,When every man has realized that his birth is a defeat, existence, endurable at last, will seem like the day after a surrender, like the relief and the repose of the conquered.''
- The Trouble With Being Born, Sever Books, 1976 (1973), page 181 -
,,Birth and chain are synonyms. To see the light of day, to see shackles...''
- The Trouble With Being Born, Sever Books, 1976 (1973), page 211 -
,,Not to be born is undoubtedly the best plan of all. Unfortunately it is within no one's reach.''
- The Trouble With Being Born, Sever Books, 1976 (1973), page 212 -
,,Birth, what an exile!''
- Cahiers, 1957-1972 -
,,Anyone who lives is defeated and birth is a foretaste of capitulation.''
- Cahiers, 1957-1972 -
,,Every birth is a capitulation.''
- Cahiers, 1957-1972 -
,,The only thing I know - I flatter myself that I understood it already, when I was twenty years old - that one should not procreate.''
- Cahiers, 1957-1972 -
,,Crime is to transmit, through procreation, one’s frailties to someone else, to force someone to experience the same things we are experiencing: Gehenna, which may be even worse than our own. I could never consent to give life to someone who would inherent my miseries.''
- Cahiers, 1957-1972 -
,,Compassion makes you not want to be a ,,progenitor''. This is the cruelest word I know.''
- Cahiers, 1957-1972 -
Crawford Jim
Books about antinatalism:
Confessions of an Antinatalist, Nine-Banded Books, 2010
Quotes:
''Life is a mixture of good and bad, or so they say. Trouble is, there’s no way to determine where a particular life might fall along fortune’s spectrum. For every child born into the lap of luxury, there’s another born on the point of a knife. There are no guarantees as to what may transpire as the immediate present unfolds into the uncertain future. Things change in an instant. Two things, however, are certain. Everyone will suffer. And everyone will die. Back to where we came from. Knowing this, and understanding full well that any particular life embodies the potential for experiencing extreme pain and unhappiness unceasing in some cases is procreation really worth the risk?''
- Confessions of an Antinatalist, Nine-Banded Books, 2010 -
Encratites
Quotes
''For through their abstinence they sin against creaation and the holy Creator, against the sole, almighty God; and they teach that one should not enter into matrimony and beget children, should not bring further unhappy beings into the world, and produce fresh fodder for death.''
- Clement of Alexandria, Stromata -
''Young men and women could decide to remain virgins: by passing through puberty without intercourse, they could overcome the sexual temptations to which Adam and Eve had finally succumbed. Young married women could initiate nothing less than a "boycott of the womb"; they could withhold their bodies from sexual intercourse, thereby cheating death of further prey.''
- Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, Columbia University Press, 1988, page 96 -
''These Alexandrian encratites whom Clement knowsadditionally argued that death itself was overcome by the believer when he or she gave up procreation. They based their belief on a saying of Jesus from the Gospel of the Egyptians: When Salome asked the Lord, 'How long will death hold sway?' he answered, 'As long as you women bear children'."
- April D. De Conick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of the Gospel And Its Growth, T&T Clark Int'l, 2006, page 183 -
''Other groups, like the Encratites, saw procreation asthe diabolically inspired evil that perpetuates our imprisonment within these mortal coils. They argued that total purity would disentangle trapped souls, reuniting them with the light.''
- Jo Ann McNamara, A New Song: Celibate Women in the First Three Christian Centuries , Routledge, 1985, page 70 -
''This attitude of the Encratites is radical: birth implies death, birth causes the extension of the régime of death: only abstention from marriage and procreation could introduce resurrection and life, could hasten resurrection and life.''
- R. van den Broek, M. J. Vermaseren, Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions Presented to Gilles Quispel on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance), Brill Academic Pub, 1997, page 34 -
''The Encratites held that procreation is evil, because birth inevitably leads to death.''
- Gilles Quispel, Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica. Collected Essays of Gilles Quispel, Brill Academic Pub, 2008, page 228 -
Fehige Christoph
Articles about antinatalism:
Preferences, A Pareto Principle for Possible People, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1998
de Giraud Théophile
Books about antinatalism:
L'art de guillotiner les procréateurs: Manifeste anti-nataliste, Le Mort-Qui-Trompe, 2006 (French language)
Quotes:
"Another argument is often made by the irresponsible ones who breed us - that it is an act of "leaving a trace" - strange impulse! Let us immediately observe that from an ethological point of view this is akin to the attitude many mammals have to leave droppings on the ground to mark their path or territory. The dog urinating against a lamp post also leaves a trace, one however which, unlike the baby, benefits from the privilege of not having to endure the grueling stresses of life...''
- L'art de guillotiner les procréateurs: Manifeste anti-nataliste, Le Mort-Qui-Trompe, 2006 -
Harrison Gerald
Articles about antinatalism:
Better Not to Have Children, 2011, Think Vol. 10, Issue 27, pages 113-121, co-author with Julia Tanner
Antinatalism, Asymmetry, and an Ethic of Prima FacieDuties, 2012, South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 31, No. 1, 2012, pages 94-103
Quotes:
''It might be pointed out that we cannot gain someone's consent to exist; we cannot gain their consent before they exist and by the time they exist it's too late. But the fact that we cannot gain their consent does not mean that we are free to do without it. Suppose you wish to torture someone against their will, you cannot seek your victim's consent – the torture would not then be against their will. It would be absurd to argue that for this reason we are permitted to torture people against their will. Similarly, the fact that prospective parents cannot get the consent of those they plan to bring into existence doesn't magically mean it's OK. Quite the opposite – if you can't get the consent of the person you're going to significantly affect by your action, then the default position is that you don't do whatever it is that's going to affect them. There are exceptions. Pushing someone out of the way of a falling piano is morally right even if no prior consent can be given (if, for instance, there isn't time). But in this kind of case you are preventing someone from coming to great harm. To procreate – to subject someone to a life – does not prevent them coming to harm. Not being created cannot harm them because they don't exist.''
- Better Not To Have Children, Think, 2011, Vol. 10, Issue 27, pages 113-121 -
''It therefore seems there are at least two prima facie duties that push towards makingprocreative acts wrong overall: our prima facie duty to prevent pain and our prima facie duty not to seriously affect someone else without his prior consent. Other thingsbeing equal, these generate a duty not to procreate.''
- Antinatalism, Asymmetry, and an Ethic of Prima Facie Duties, South African Journal of Philosophy, 2012, Vol. 31, No. 1, pages 94-103 -
Häyry Matti
Articles about antinatalism:
The rational cure for prereproductive stress syndrome, Journal Of Medical Ethics, 2004, 30(4), pages 377–378
The rational cure for prereproductive stress syndrome revisited, Journal Of Medical Ethics, 2005, 31(10), pages 606–607
Arguments and Analysis in Bioethics, Rodopi, 2010, pages 171-174
Quotes:
''I believe it is morally wrong to cause avoidable suffering to other people. This belief gives rise to two different objections to human reproduction. On the one hand, since all human beings suffer at some point in their lives, every parent who could have declined to procreate is to blame. On the other hand, since potential parents cannot guarantee that the lives of their children will be bettert han non-existence, they can also be rightfully accused of gambling on other people’s lives, whatever the outcome. Because of the uncertainties of human life, anybody’s children can end uparguing that it would have been better for them not to have been born at all. The probability of this outcome does notnecessarily matter. It is enough that thepossibility is real, which it always is.''
- The rational cure for prereproductive stress syndrome, Journal Of Medical Ethics, 2004, August, 30(4), pages 377–378 -
''If it is irrational to allow the worst outcome of our actions, and if it is immoral to cause suffering, then it is irrational and immoral to have children.''
- The rational cure for prereproductive stress syndrome revisited, Journal Of Medical Ethics, 2005, October, 31(10), pages 606–607 -
Hicks Bill
Quotes:
"'Wouldn't it be nice to have a kid, to have this fresh, clean slate, which we could fill, and a little clean spirit, totally, you know, innocent, and to fill it with good ideas'. Yeah, yeah, how about this? If you're so ####ing altruistic, why don't you leave the little clean spirit wherever it is right now? OK? Horrible act, childbirth. It's a nightmare. Bringing- I would never bring a kid to this ####ing planet."
-Love All the People. Constable, 2005, page 164
von Humboldt Alexander
Quotes:
''I was not born in order to be the father of a family. Moreover I regard marriage as a sin and propagation of children as a crime. It is my conviction also that he is a fool, and still more a sinner, who takes upon himself the yoke of marriage — a fool, because he thereby throws away his freedom, without gaining a corresponding recompense; a sinner, because he gives life to children, without being able to give them the certainty of happiness. I despise humanity in all its strata; I foresee that our posterity will be far more unhappy than we are; and should not I be a sinner, if, in spite of this insight, I should take care to leave a posterity of unhappy beings behind me? The whole of life is the greatest insanity. And if for eighty years one strives and inquiries, still one is obliged finally to confess that he has striven for nothing and has found nothing. Did we at least know why we are in this world! But to the thinker, everything is and remains a riddle; and the greates good luck is that of being born at flathead.''
- Geoffrey Gilbert, Thomas Robert Malthus: Critical Responses, Routledge, 1998, page 188-189 -
Jaccard Roland
Quotes:
''Giving life is an evil act, even criminal.''
- Isabelle Hachey, Pourquoi fait-on des enfants?, La Presse, 2009 -
Kerouac Jack
Quotes:
''Let us cease bestiality & go into the bright room of the mind realizing emptiness, and sit with the truth. And let no man be guilty, after this, Dec. 9 1954, of causing birth. -- Let there be an end to birth, an end to life, and therefore an end to death. Let there be no more fairy tales and ghost stories around and about this. I don't advocate that everybody die, I only say everybody finish your lives in purity and solitude and gentleness and realization of the truth and be not the cause of any further birth and turning of the black wheel of death.''
- Jack Kerouac, Some of the Dharma, Penguin Books, 1999, page 175 -
Kierkegaard Søren
Quotes:
"A man is born in sin, he enters this world by means of a crime, his existence is a crime - and procreation is the fall. ... way of a crime, a sin, then it is not difficult to guess where one arrives when one is born - one enters a prison, this world is a prison. And the punishment... is to exist... you will thank God that some time through death you may get out of it... from a Christian standpoint, this life is a suffering of punishment."
- The Last Years: The Kierkegaard Journals 1853-1855, page 113 -
Lenharo di Santis Thiago
Books about antinatalism:
Porque te amo, NÃO nascerás!, LGE, 2009, co-author with Julio Cabrera (Portuguese language).
Quotes:
''Realizing that nothing guarantees that the children will be “happy”, also that every effort from parents (with this purpose) can be in vain. Furthermore, noting that if the children never came to exist, this problem would not exist as well; but this became a problem because the children was obligated to born for parents luxury, even though it could be avoided. Well, taking into account all of this, a sensible and responsible procreator (or better saying, a responsible pre-procreator) would stop right there, precisely at “pre”.''
- Porque te amo, NÃO nascerás!, LGE, 2009, pages 162-163 -
''The bet, when procreating, endangers another innocent, who had no power, no awareness and no responsibility (for being in this situation); also, the bet was unnecessary and avoidable; in case it had been avoided, it would not harm the innocent, but it was not avoided because we were talking about a compulsive gambler.''
- Porque te amo, NÃO nascerás!, LGE, 2009, pages 186-187 -
Ligotti Thomas
Books about antinatalism:
The Conspiracy Against The Human Race: A Contrivance Of Horror, Hippocampus Press, 2010
Quotes:
''Perhaps the greatest strike against philosophical pessimism is that its only theme is human suffering. This is the last item on the list of our species’ obsessions and detracts from everything that matters to us, such as the Good, the Beautiful, and a Sparking Clean Toilet Bowl. For the pessimist, everything considered in isolation from human suffering or any cognition that does not have as its motive the origins, nature, and elimination of human suffering is at base recreational, whether it takes the form of conceptual probing or physical action in the world - for example, delving into game theory or traveling in outer space, respectively. And by “human suffering,” the pessimist is not thinking of particular sufferings and their relief, but of suffering itself. Remedies may be discovered for certain diseases and sociopolitical barbarities may be amended. But those are only stopgaps. Human suffering will remain insoluble as long as human beings exist. The one truly effective solution for suffering is that spoken of in Zapffe’s “Last Messiah.” It may not be a welcome solution for a stopgap world, but it would forever put an end to suffering, should we ever care to do so. The pessimist’s credo, or one of them, is that nonexistence never hurt anyone and existence hurts everyone. Although our selves may be illusory creations of consciousness, our pain is nonetheless real.''
- The Conspiracy against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror, Hippocampus Press, 2010 -
''Personally, I’m afraid of suffering and afraid of dying. I’m also afraid of witnessing the suffering and death of those who are close to me. And no doubt I project these fears on those around me and those to come, which makes it impossible for me to understand why everyone isn’t an antinatalist, just as I have to assume pronatalists can’t understand why everyone isn’t like them.''
- Interview for THE HAT RACK -
Lovecraft Howard Phillips
Quotes:
''It is good to be a cynic - it is better to be a contented cat - and it is best not to exist at all. Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world - we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark. If we were sensible we would seek death-the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.''
- Collected Essays, A Confession of Unfaith, Collected Essays of H. P. Lovecraft: Philosophy; Autobiography and Miscellany, Hippocampus Press, 2006 (1922) -
Mainländer Philipp
Quotes:
,,Crime is to create human and thus force him to experience the same things we do.''
- Die Philosophie Der Erlosung, Kessinger Publishing, 2009 (1879) (German language) -
Mani
Quotes:
''If anyone condemns human marriage and has a horror of the procreation of living bodies, as Manichaeus and Priscillian have said, let him be anathema.''
- COUNCIL OF BRAGA II, 561, 241 11. -
Manichaeans
Quotes:
''The rejection of procreation, the condemnation of hunting, indeed in effect of all knightly sport because of the fear of harming light particles, must necessarily have led to disputes when it came to acquainting the ruling warrior class with his teachings.''
- Iain Gardner & Samuel N. C. Lieu, Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire, Cambridge University Press, 2004, page 7 -
''The Manichean attitude to marriage was entirely negative as the act of procreation prolongs the imprisonment of Soul, which would now be further diversified into matter.''
- Iain Gardner & Samuel N. C. Lieu, Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire, Cambridge University Press, 2004, page 22 -
''The creation of Eve had a special purpose. She is more thoroughly subject to the demons, thus becoming their instrument against Adam; "to her they imparted of their concupiscence in order to seduce Adam" - a seduction not only to carnal but through it to reproduction, the most formidable device in Satan's strategy. For not only would it indefinitely prolong the captivity of Light, but it would also through the multiplication so disperse the Light as to render infinitely more difficult the work of salvation, whose only way is to awaken every individual soul. For the Darkness, therefore, everything turned on the seduction of Adam, as for the celestials, on awakening him in time to prevent his seduction.''
- Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion. The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christiantty, Beacon Press, Boston 1958, page 228 -
''The practical conclusions from this cosmo-soteriologicalsystem are extremely clear-cut, all of them amounting to a rigorous asceticism. "Since the ruin of the Hyle is decreed by God, one should abstain from all ensouled things and eat only vegetables and whatever else is non-sentient, and abstain from marriage, the delights of love and the begetting of children, so that the divine Power may not through the succession of generations remain longer in the Hyle." However, one must not, in order to help effect the purification of things, commit suicide"
- Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion. The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christiantty, Beacon Press, Boston 1958, page 231 -
''The soul of the person who persisted in things of the flesh - fornication, procreation, possessions, cultivation, harvesting, eating of meat, drinking of wine - is condemned to rebirth in a succession of bodies.''
- Encyclopedia Brittanica -
Marcion of Sinope
Quotes:
''Here the pollution by the flesh and its lust, so widespread a theme in this age, is not even mentioned; instead (though not to its exclusion: cf. Tertullian, op. cit. I. 19, where marriage is called a "filthiness" or "obscenity" [spurcitiae]) it is the aspect of reproduction which disqualifies sexuality - that very aspect which in the eyes of the Church alone justifies it as its purpose under nature's dispensation. Marcion here voices a genuine and typical gnostic argument, whose fullest elaboration we shall meet in Mani: that the reproductive scheme is an ingenious archontic device for the indefinite retention of souls in the world.''
- Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion. The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christiantty, Beacon Press, Boston 1958, pages 144-145 -
Marcionites
Melo Rafael Tages
Books about antinatalism:
A última filosofia: An essay about antinatalism, CreateSpace, 2012 (Portuguese language)
Müller Philipp
Books about antinatalism:
Freitod - Die Beste Lösung, Books on Demand, 2004 (German language)
Neuffer Martin
Books about antinatalism:
Nein zum Leben - Ein Essay, Safchbuch Fischer, 1992 (German language)
Phibionites (also known as Borborites)
Priscillian of Avila
Quotes:
''If anyone condemns human marriage and has a horror of the procreation of living bodies, as Manichaeus and Priscillian have said, let him be anathema.''
- COUNCIL OF BRAGA II, 561, 241 11. -
Priscillianists
Quotes:
''Priscillianists taught a modalist doctrine of the Trinity and denied the pre-existence of Christ as well as his real humanity; they condemned marriage, the procreation of children, and eating meat.''
- John Bowker, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, Oxford University Press, 2000 -
''The human body, as all other flesh,according to the Priscillianistic doctrine, came from the devil. (...) The same principles led them to disapprove of marriage, and of the procreationof children; and to forbid the eating of flesh.''
- Johann Lorenz Mosheim, Institutes Of Ecclesiastical History, Ancient And Modern... , Nabu Press, 2011, page 171 -
Saturnilus of Antioch
Quotes:
''And he affirms that marriage and procreation are from Satan.'' (about Saturnilus of Antioch)
- Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, Book VII, Chapter 16. The System of Saturnilus -
Schopenhauer Arthur
Quotes:
''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?''
- On the Sufferings of the World, Penguin Books, Limited, 2009 -
''Some of the church fathers have taught that even marital cohabitation should only be allowed when it occurs merely for the sake of the procreation of children, it attributes this view to the Pythagoreans. This is, however, strictly speaking, incorrect. For if the coitus be no longer desired for its own sake, the negation of the Will-to-Live has already appeared, and the propagation of the human race is then superfluous and senseless, inasmuch as its purpose is already attained. Besides, without any subjective passion, without lust and physical pressure, with sheer deliberation, and the cold blooded purpose to place a human being in the world merely in order that he should be there this would be such a very questionable moral action that few would take it upon themselves; one might even say of it indeed that it stood in the same relation to generation from the mere sexual impulse as a cold-blooded deliberate murder does to a death-stroke given in anger.''
- Selected Essays of Schopenhauer, G. Bell and Sons, 1926, Contributions to the Doctrine of the Affirmation and Nega-tion of the Will-to-live, page 269 -
Smith Martin
Books about antintalism:
No Baby No Cry, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013
Tanner Julia
Articles about antinatalism:
Better Not to Have Children, 2011, Think Vol. 10, Issue 27, co-author with Gerald Harrison, pages 113-121
Quotes:
''It might be pointed out that we cannot gain someone's consent to exist; we cannot gain their consent before they exist and by the time they exist it's too late. But the fact that we cannot gain their consent does not mean that we are free to do without it. Suppose you wish to torture someone against their will, you cannot seek your victim's consent – the torture would not then be against their will. It would be absurd to argue that for this reason we are permitted to torture people against their will. Similarly, the fact that prospective parents cannot get the consent of those they plan to bring into existence doesn't magically mean it's OK. Quite the opposite – if you can't get the consent of the person you're going to significantly affect by your action, then the default position is that you don't do whatever it is that's going to affect them. There are exceptions. Pushing someone out of the way of a falling piano is morally right even if no prior consent can be given (if, for instance, there isn't time). But in this kind of case you are preventing someone from coming to great harm. To procreate – to subject someone to a life – does not prevent them coming to harm. Not being created cannot harm them because they don't exist.''
- Better Not To Have Children, Think, 2011, Vol. 10, Issue 27, pages 113-121 -
Tønnessen Herman
Books about antinatalism:
Jeg velger sannheten: En dialog mellom Peter Wessel Zapffe og Herman Tønnessen, Oslo, Universitets forlaget 1983, co-author with Peter Wessel Zapffe (Norwegian language)
Vallejo Fernando
Quotes:
''Heaven and happiness do not exist. That’s your parents’ way to justify the crime of having brought you into this world. What exists is reality, the tough reality, this slaughterhouse we’ve come to die in, if not to kill and to eat the animals, our fellow creatures. Therefore, do not reproduce, do not repeat the crimes committed against you, do not give back the same, evil paid with evil, as imposing life is the ultimate crime. Do not disturb the unborn, let them be in the peace of nothingness, anyway we’ll all eventually go back there, so why beat around the bush?''
- Luis Ospina, La desazón suprema: Retrato de Fernando Vallejo, 2003 -
''Those I've most loved are my grandma Raquel Pizano and my dog Bruja. I also loved my dad. But after all he is guilty of imposing on me the burden of life. Life's a burden, it's a curse.''
- Luis Ospina, La desazón suprema: Retrato de Fernando Vallejo, 2003 -
Vetter Hermann
Articles about antinatalism:
The Production of Children as a Problem of Utilitarian Ethics, Inquiry 12 (1-4), 1969, pages 445-447
Quotes:
''There is no moral reason for starting someone’s existence on account of the happiness he would experience. (…) There is a moral reason for not starting someone’s existence on account of the unhappiness he would experience.''
- Hermann Vetter, The Production of Children as a Problem of Utilitarian Ethics, Inquiry 12 (1-4), 1969, pages 445-447 -
Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
Quotes:
''Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth’s biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense.''
Zapffe Peter Wessel
Articles about antinatalism:
The Last Messiah, Philosophy Now, march/april 2004 (1933)
Books about antinatalism:
Peter Wessel Zapffe, Om det tragiske, Pax Forlag, 1996 (1941) (Norwegian language)
Jeg velger sannheten: En dialog mellom Peter Wessel Zapffe og Herman Tønnessen, Oslo, Universitets forlaget 1983, co-author with Herman Tønnessen (Norwegian language)
Quotes:
''The sign of doom is written on your brows - how long will ye kick against the pin-pricks? But there is one conquest and one crown, one redemption and one solution. Know yourselves - be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.''
- The Last Messiah, Philosophy Now, March/April, 2012 -
''The sooner humanity dares to harmonise itself with its biological predicament, the better. And this means to willingly withdraw in contempt for its worldly terms, just as the heat-craving species went extinct when temperatures dropped. To us, it is the moral climate of the cosmos that is intolerable, and a two-child policy could make our discontinuance a pain-free one. Yet instead we are expanding and succeeding everywhere, as necessity has taught us to mutilate the formula in our hearts. Perhaps the most unreasonable effect of such invigorating vulgarisation is the doctrine that the individual “has a duty” to suffer nameless agony and a terrible death if this saves or benefits the rest of his group. Anyone who declines is subjected to doom and death, instead of the revulsion being directed at the world-order engendering the situation. To any independent observer, this plainly is to juxtapose incommensurable things; no future triumph or metamorphosis can justify the pitiful blighting of a human being against his will. It is upon a pavement of battered destinies that the survivors storm ahead toward new bland sensations and mass deaths.''
- Interview -
''For me, a desert island is no tragedy, neither is a deserted planet.''
- Nina Witoszek, Andrew Brennan, Philosophical Dialogues, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999, page 192 -
Other quotes, literary quotes and poetry:
Beckett Samuel
''They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.''
''Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries.''
- Waiting for Godot -
Buddha Siddhārtha Gautama
''"Now this, monks, is the noble truth of dukkha: birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair are dukkha; association with the unbeloved is dukkha; separation from the loved is dukkha; not getting what is wanted is dukkha. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are dukkha.
"And this, monks is the noble truth of the origination of dukkha: the craving that makes for further becoming — accompanied by passion & delight, relishing now here & now there — i.e., craving for sensual pleasure, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming.
"And this, monks, is the noble truth of the cessation of dukkha: the remainderless fading & cessation, renunciation, relinquishment, release, & letting go of that very craving."
And this, monks, is the noble truth of the way of practice leading to the cessation of dukkha: precisely this Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration."
- Four Noble Truths -
''From Ignorance spring the samkhâras, from the samkhâras springs Consciousness, from Consciousness spring Name-and-Form, from Name-and-Form spring the six Provinces, from the six Provinces springs Contact, from Contact springs Sensation, from Sensation springs Thirst (or Desire), from Thirst springs Attachment, from Attachment springs Existence, from Existence springs Birth, from Birth spring Old Age and Death, grief, lamentation, suffering, dejection, and despair. Such is the origination of this whole mass of suffering. Again, by the destruction of Ignorance, which consists in the complete absence of lust, the samkhâras are destroyed, by the destruction of the samkhâras Consciousness is destroyed, by the destruction of Consciousness Name-and-Form are destroyed, by the destruction of Name-and-Form the six Provinces are destroyed, by the destruction of the six Provinces Contact is destroyed, by the destruction of Contact Sensation is destroyed, by the destruction of Sensation Thirst is destroyed, by the destruction of Thirst Attachment is destroyed, by the destruction of Attachment Existence is destroyed, by the destruction of Existence Birth is destroyed, by the destruction of Birth Old Age and Death, grief, lamentation, suffering, dejection, and despair are destroyed. Such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering.''
- Mahavagga -
In his book ''The Spirit of Buddhism'' sir Hari Singh Gour interprets Four Noble Truths, this passage and whole teachings of Buddha as follows : ''Buddh states his propositions in the pedantic style of his age. He throws them into a form of Sorites; but, as such, it is logically faulty and all he wishes to convey is this: Oblivious of the suffering to which life is subject, man begets children, and is thus the cause of old age and death. If he would only realize what suffering he would add to by his act, he would desist from the procreation of children; and so stop the operation of old age and death.'', pages 286-288.
Heine Heinrich
''Sleep is good: and Death is better, yet. Surely never to have been born is best.''
- Morphine -
de Maupassant Guy
''You may be sure that God has not put anything on this earth that is clean, pretty, elegant or accessory to our ideal; the human brain has done it. It is man who has introduced a little grace, beauty, unknown charm and mystery into creation by singing about it, interpreting it, by admiring it as a poet, idealizing it as an artist and by explaining it through science, doubtless making mistakes, but finding ingenious reasons, hidden grace and beauty, unknown charm and mystery in the various phenomena of Nature. God created only coarse beings, full of the germs of disease, who, after a few years of bestial enjoyment, grow old and infirm, with all the ugliness and all the want of power of human decrepitude. He seems to have made them only in order that they may reproduce their species in an ignoble manner and then die like ephemeral insects. I said reproduce their species in an ignoble manner and I adhere to that expression. What is there as a matter of fact more ignoble and more repugnant than that act of reproduction of living beings, against which all delicate minds always have revolted and always will revolt?''
- Useless Beauty -
Larkin Philip
''Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can. And don't have any kids yourself.''
- This Be The Verse -
Leopardi Giacomo
''But wherefore give him life? Why bring him up at all, if this be all? If life is nought but pain and care, why, why should we the burden bear?''
- Night Song Of A Wandering Shepherd In Asia -
''Perhaps in every state beneath the sun,
Or high, or low, in cradle or in stall,
The day of birth is fatal to us all.''
- Night Song Of A Wandering Shepherd In Asia -
Sophocles
''Never to have been born is best but if we must see the light, the next best is quickly returning whence we came. When youth departs, with all its follies, who does not stagger under evils? Who escapes them?''
- Oedipus at Colonus -
Theognis of Megara
''Best of all for mortal beings is never to have been born at all. Nor ever to have set eyes on the bright light of the sun.
- Greek Elegiac Poetry, Loeb Classical Library, 1999, page 234 -
Wisdom of Silenus
''Oh, wretched ephemeral race … why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is - to die soon.''