Antinatalist Quotes Throughout time:

Many of the quotes found below, and a tremendous source of inspiration for this collection, was the fine work of Piotr Miron, who compiled the incredible document, “Antinatalism – list of books, articles and quotes”, the original version of which can be found here:

http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?p=93087#post93087

This collection would also not have been possible without the incredible scholarship of antinatalist philosopher & historian, Karim Akerma – please purchase his magnificent book on the subject of antinatalist history, here:

Antinatalismus: Ein Handbook (German edition) Antinatalism: A Handbook (English edition)

And visit his website, here: https://antinatalismblog.wordpress.com/


Ipuwer Papyrus (1,250 BCE):

“Would that there were an end of men, without conception, without birth! Then would the land be quiet from noise and tumult be no more.”

[Ipuwer Papyrus, Section VI]

“Old and young say: I wish I were dead! Little children say, I should never have been called into life!”

Silenus:

“Ephemeral offspring of a travailing genius and of harsh fortune, why do you force me to speak what it were better for you men not to know?

For a life spent in ignorance of one’s own woes is most free from grief. But for men it is utterly impossible that they should obtain the best thing of all, or even have any share in its nature (for the best thing for all men and women is not to be born);

however, the next best thing to this, and the first of those to which man can attain, but nevertheless only the second best, is, after being born, to die as quickly as possible.”


Thales of Miletus (626/623BCE-548/545BCE ):

“When he was asked why he did not have children, he replied, "because of my love for children." And they say that when his mother tried to compel him to marry he would say, "It is not yet the right time," and then, as she insisted when he was no longer young, "It is no longer the right time.”

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

But, since he is born, a man should make utmost haste through the gates of Death And then repose, the earth piled into a mound round himself.”

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama (500 BCE – 401 BCE):

“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.


Watts and Co., London, 1912, p. 53 -


Luke 23:29

Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!


Luke 23:29: For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.


Ecclesiastes 4:2-3

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.


Possibly written by King Solomon, somewhere between 450 BCE & 180 BCE. (This is hotly disputed by biblical scholars.) Ecclesiastes is the fictional autobiography of a king, Kohelet, who in his old age is filled with a sense of futility. In his privileged position, he has done it all, and experienced everything, but still comes to the conclusion that it would be better never to born, and never to see the world. I have not yet fully read Ecclesiastes, and so given that, and my limited research into the matter, its hard for me to say how driven by any sort of circumstantial negative context this statement might be coming from, but compared to there Anti-Natalistic passages from the Bible, this one does appear to be more similarly alighted to the modern Antinatalist sentiment; that it is always better never to come into existence, and could even be interpreted as Promortalist, in that Kohelet believed that it is better to be dead.


Matthew 24:19

Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days!

Matthew 26:24

Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he has not been born. (Jesus to Judas.)


Luke 23:26-31

But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.

For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.


Book of Job 3:1-13

“After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth. Job answered: “Let the day perish in which I was born, the night which said, ‘There is a boy conceived.’ Let that day be darkness. Don’t let God from above seek for it, neither let the light shine on it. Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell on it. Let all that makes the day black terrify it. As for that night, let thick darkness seize on it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months. Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful voice come therein. Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan. Let the stars of its twilight be dark. Let it look for light, but have none, neither let it see the eyelids of the morning, because it didn’t shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes. “Why didn’t I die from the womb? Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me? Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should nurse? For now I should have lain down and been quiet. I should have slept, then I would have been at rest”


Jeremiah 20:14-18

Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!

Cursed be the man who brought my father the news, who made him very glad, saying, “A child is born to you—a son!”

May that man be like the towns the LORD overthrew without pity. May he hear wailing in the morning, a battle cry at noon.

For he did not kill me in the womb, with my mother as my grave, her womb enlarged forever.

Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame?


Seneca 40 AD

Nothing is so deceptive, nothing is so treacherous as human life; by Hercules, were it not given to men before they could form an opinion, no one would take it. Not to be born, therefore, is the happiest lot of all.

Seneca: If the dead retain no feeling whatever, my brother has escaped from all the troubles of life, has been restored to the place which he occupied before his birth, and, being free from every kind of ill, can neither fear, nor desire, nor suffer: what madness then for me never to cease grieving for one who will never grieve again? If the dead have any feeling, then my brother is now like one who has been let out of a prison in which he has long been confined…

Why then am I wasting away with grief for one who is either in bliss or non-existent? it would be envy to weep for one who is in bliss, it would be madness to weep for one who has no existence whatever

… If you reckon it up properly, he has been spared more than he has lost … If we are to believe some profound seekers after truth, life is all torment. — Of Consolation: To Polybius

Encratites:

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 –