Skip to content

Only someone who loves children the most can see them beyond the tip of their own nose and wonder about the consequences of signing death sentences on not yet existing beings.

— Michel Onfray

Another quote →

Topics

Philosophy

More quotes by Michel Onfray

Not having children derives not from dislike, but from love too great to bring them into this world, too limited, too vain, too cruel.

By hedonistic logic, we ought to avoid imposing anything, existence included, onto anyone who hasn't asked for it.

Those childless by choice love children as much, if not more, than their fertile breeders. When asked why he does not have children, Thales replied, "because of my concern for children."

Why make children? In the name of what? To achieve what? What legitimizes pulling a being out of nothingness, disturbing its peace, only so that it would have to take a short walk on this planet, leading back to the nothingness from which it was pulled out?

Is not the cruel will of adults, by causing birth, condemning children to work, discipline, obedience, submission, frustration in a nursery, primary school, middle school, high school, university or army, and then in a factory, in a workshop, in a company or in an office? Should we call love transmitting this vileness to the body from our own body?

All Michel Onfray quotes →

You may also like

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: Michel Onfray (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.