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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
2
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
3
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
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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
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To bear children into this world is like carrying wood to a burning house.Peter Wessel Zapffe
6
It is not the case that one can create new people on the assumption that if they are not pleased to have come into existence they can simply kill themselves. Once somebody has come into existence and attachments with that person have been formed, suicide can cause the kind of pain that makes the pain of childlessness mild by comparison. Somebody contemplating suicide knows (or should know) this. This places an important obstacle in the way of suicide. One’s life may be bad, but one must consider what affect ending it would have on one’s family and friends. There will be times when life has become so bad that it is unreasonable for the interests of the loved ones in having the person alive to outweigh that person’s interests in ceasing to exist. When this is true will depend in part on particular features of the person for whom continued life is a burden. Different people are able to bear different magnitudes of burden. It may even be indecent for family members to expect that person to continue living. On other occasions one’s life may be bad but not so bad as to warrant killing oneself and thereby making the lives of one’s family and friends still much worse than they already are. .David Benatar
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This is not to offer a general recommendation of suicide. Suicide, like death from other causes, makes the lives of those who are bereaved much worse. Rushing into one’s own suicide can have profound negative impact on the lives of those close to one. Although an Epicurean may be committed to not caring about whathappens after his death, it is still the case that the bereaved suffer a harm even if the deceased does not. That suicide harms those who are thereby bereaved is part of the tragedy of coming into existence. We find ourselves in a kind of trap. We have already come into existence. To end our existence causes immense pain to those we love and for whom we care. Potential procreators would do well to consider this trap they lay when they produce offspring.David Benatar
8
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 bothis the one who has never been born, who has not seen the evilthat is done under the sun.Anonymous
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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.Philip Larkin
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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