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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.

— David Benatar Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (2006)

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Philosophy

More quotes by David Benatar

Humans inflict untold suffering and death on many billions of animals every year, and the overwhelming majority of humans are heavily complicit.

Permissible Progeny? The Morality of Procreation and Parenting (2015)

Humanity is a moral disaster. There would have been much less destruction had we never evolved. The fewer humans there are in the future, the less destruction there will still be.

Permissible Progeny? The Morality of Procreation and Parenting (2015)

On my view there is no net benefit to coming into existence and thus coming into existence is never worth its costs.

Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (2006)

Those who consume animals not only harm those animals and endanger themselves, but they also threaten the well-being of other humans who currently or will later inhabit the planet.

To procreate is thus to engage in a kind of Russian roulette, but one in which the "gun" is aimed not at oneself but instead at one's oﬀspring. You trigger a new life and thereby subject that new life to the risk of unspeakable suﬀering.

Debating Procreation: Is It Wrong To Reproduce? (2015)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.

Martin Buber Power and Love (1926)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: David Benatar (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.