19 quotes
Each new generation asks – What is the meaning of life? A more fertile way of putting the question would be – Why does man need a meaning to life?
The Humorous Pessimist (1990)
To bear children into this world is like carrying wood into a burning house.
No future triumph or metamorphosis can justify the pitiful blighting of a human being against his will.
For me, a desert island is no tragedy, neither is a deserted planet.
The seed of a metaphysical or religious defeat is in us all. For the honest questioner, however, who doesn’t seek refuge in some faith or fantasy, there will never be an answer.
The Humorous Pessimist (1990)
When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of 'saving' the suicidal is based on a hair-raising misapprehension of the nature of existence.
The Last Messiah (1933)
The immediate facts are what we must relate to. Darkness and light, beginning and end.
The Humorous Pessimist (1990)
Above all, we must make the reproductive question ethically relevant. A coin is turned around before it is handed to the beggar, yet a child is unflinchingly tossed into cosmic bruteness.
If one regards life and death as natural processes, the metaphysical dread vanishes, and one obtains "peace of mind".
The Humorous Pessimist (1990)
Mankind ought to end its existence of its own will.
The Humorous Pessimist (1990)
Death is the most certain and the most uncertain event there is.
The Humorous Pessimist (1990)
Death is a terrible provocation. It appears almost everywhere, presenting a stern but effective scale for both values and ethical standards.
The Humorous Pessimist (1990)
Man is a tragic animal. Not because of his smallness, but because he is too well endowed. Man has longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfill. We have expectations of a just and moral world. Man requires meaning in a meaningless world.
The Humorous Pessimist (1990)
Nobody has ever managed to explain what it is they are longing after in religion, but it is quite clear what they are trying to escape from – this earthly vale of tears, one’s untenable existential situation.
The Last Messiah (1933)
We come from an inconceivable nothingness. We stay a while in something which seems equally inconceivable, only to vanish again into the inconceivable nothingness.
The Humorous Pessimist (1990)
The sign of doom is written on your brows – how long will ye kick against the pinpricks? 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.
Why, then, has mankind not long ago gone extinct during great epidemics of madness? Why do only a fairly minor number of individuals perish because they fail to endure the strain of living — because cognition gives them more than they can carry? Cultural history, as well as observation of ourselves and others, allow the following answer: Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.
The Last Messiah (1933)
The absurdity of life cannot be resolved, but it can be terminated. We can overcome this meaningless world order by constantly letting two become one, over and over again, until the very last human being disappears; an uninhabited Earth is no misfortune.
The Humorous Pessimist (1990)
In accordance with my conception of life, I have chosen not to bring children into the world. 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.
The Humorous Pessimist (1990)