Eugenics Quotes

“If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics

“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage.”
― Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

“Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism... neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the worlds greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy.”
― Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany

“The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man's new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct, Several European countries and a number of states of the American Union sterilize the criminal and the insane. This is not sufficient. The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.”
― Nikola Tesla

“The "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" begins with "life", and "life" begins at conception.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Beware of more powerful weapons. They often inflict as much damage to your soul as they do to you enemies.”
― Greg Cox, The Eugenics Wars, Vol. 1: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh

“I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.”
― Charles Darwin

“The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statues, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen—that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the government will really help it to persecute its heretics…I am not frightened of the word ‘persecution’…It is a term of legal fact. If it means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory, incapable of final proof—then our priests are not now persecuting, but our doctors are.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils : An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State

“Of all the problems which will have to be faced in the future, in my opinion, the most difficult will be those concerning the treatment of the inferior races of mankind.”
― Leonard Darwin

“The whole point of the Eugenic pseudo-scientific theories is that they are to be applied wholesale, by some more sweeping and generalizing money power than the individual husband or wife or household. Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other's.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“My firm conviction is that if wide-spread Eugenic reforms are not adopted during the next hundred years or so, our Western Civilization is inevitably destined to such a slow and gradual decay as that which has been experienced in the past by every great ancient civilization. The size and the importance of the United States throws on you a special responsibility in your endeavours to safeguard the future of our race. Those who are attending your Congress will be aiding in this endeavour, and though you will gain no thanks from your own generation, posterity will, I believe, learn to realize the great dept it owes to all the workers in this field.”
― Leonard Darwin

“All that is mere
rationalism; the superstition (that is the unreasoning repugnance
and terror) is in the person who admits there can be angels but
denies there can be devils. The superstition is in the person who
admits there can be devils but denies there can be diabolists.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“It is worth remembering one of the important lessons of the Buck story: a small number of zealous advocates can have an impact on the law that defies both science and conventional wisdom.”
― Paul A. Lombardo, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell

“Eugenics, as discussed, evidently means the control of some men
over the marriage and unmarriage of others; and probably means the
control of the few over the marriage and unmarriage of the many”
― G.K. Chesterton

“I hold it clear, therefore, if anything is clear about the
business, that the Eugenists do not merely mean that the mass of
common men should settle each other's marriages between them; the
question remains, therefore, whom they do instinctively trust when
they say that this or that ought to be done. What is this flying
and evanescent authority that vanishes wherever we seek to fix it?
Who is the man who is the lost subject that governs the Eugenist's
verb? In a large number of cases I think we can simply say that the
individual Eugenist means himself, and nobody else.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“It is cold anarchy to say that all men are to meddle in all men's
marriages. It is cold anarchy to say that any doctor may seize and
segregate anyone he likes. But it is not anarchy to say that a few
great hygienists might enclose or limit the life of all citizens,
as nurses do with a family of children. It is not anarchy, it is
tyranny; but tyranny is a workable thing.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Dedicated to the memory of MY FATHER. For if I had not believed that he would have wished me to give such help as I could toward making his life's work of service to mankind, I should never have been led to write this book.”
― Leonard Darwin, The Need For Eugenic Reform

“Page 548:

We can imagine no recommendation for using the government to manipulate fertility that does not have dangers. But this highlights the problem: The United States already has policies that inadvertently social-engineer who has babies, and it is encouraging the wrong women. If the United States did as much to encourage high-IQ women to have babies as it now does to encourage low-IQ women, it would rightly be described as engaging in aggressive manipulation of fertility. The technically precise description of America's fertility policy is that it subsidizes births among poor women, who are also disproportionately at the low end of the intelligence distribution. We urge generally that these policies, represented by the extensive network of cash and services for low-income women who have babies, be ended.”
― Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life

“Science doesn't make someone a better person, if it did, no physicist would help develop nuclear weapons, or no biologist would help develop biological weapons.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth

“Twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%[6] with the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%.[7] IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics, for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults. The heritability of IQ increases with age and reaches an asymptote at 18–20 years of age and continues at that level well into adulthood. This phenomenon is known as the Wilson Effect”
― Wikipedia: Heritability of IQ

“I cannot shake the conviction that life is (usually) worth living, and that we should continue to create the conditions for intelligent life to experience beauty, create art, discover how the world works, and continue to set and satisfy goals that presuppose a complex form of intelligence. It is at this point that our intuitions bottom out. If you think that life is pointless, given that we will leave no trace in 20 billion years, it is hard to know how to convince you to believe otherwise. An obligation to reproduce, no matter how weak it is, cannot exist unless there is value to the future experiences intelligent creatures will have.”
― Jonathan Anomaly, Creating Future People

“We want statesmen and poets and musicians and
philosophers and strong men and delicate men and brave men. The
qualities of one would be the weaknesses of the other.'' We want,
most of all, genius. Proscription on Galtonian lines would tend to
eliminate many of the great geniuses of the world who were not only
``Bohemian,'' but actually and pathologically abnormal--men like
Rousseau, Dostoevsky, Chopin, Poe, Schumann, Nietzsche, Comte,
Guy de Maupassant”
― Margaret Sanger, The Pivot Of Civilization

“We don't need AI in every gadget, we don't need CRISPR in every baby. We don't need to abandon tech and live in caves, but that's what will happen if we keep using tech haphazardly.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“We don't need AI in every gadget, we don't need CRISPR in every baby.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“Eugenics wis aye a gey sair pynt - the richt tae chuse yer ain mairraige pairtner, especially the wumman's richt, wis yin o thair vauntit freedoms, in contrast tae the FZ. Nanetheless, the Eugenics Law wis desingt tae discourage fowk, nae twa weys aboot it, fae hain bairns wi expensive medical problems. Parents that deleeberately incurrt costs for an avoidable genetic ill or disabeelity got nae benefits, nae maternity leave, nae schuill place for the bairn, naethin.”
― Wulf Kurtoglu, Braken Fences

“Cultural differences are not genetic, they're environmental.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“There is no law, only I am -
no grand design, no master clan -
no sacred script, no chosen land,
only beating hearts and helping hands.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“Science doesn't make someone a better person, if it did, no physicist would help develop nuclear weapons, or no biologist would help develop biological weapons. Science, like religion, follows the command of power, given enough incentive 99% of the world's scientists would gladly help wipe out half the world's population. Which is why, what's needed is that a good person becomes scientist, otherwise a scientist is of as much use to the world as a politician.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth

“We want statesmen and poets and musicians and philosophers and strong men and delicate men and brave men. The qualities of one would be the weaknesses of the other.'' We want, most of all, genius.

Proscription on Galtonian lines would tend to eliminate many of the great geniuses of the world who were not only ``Bohemian,'' but actually and pathologically abnormal--men like Rousseau, Dostoevsky, Chopin, Poe, Schumann, Nietzsche, Comte, Guy de Maupassant,--and how many others? But such considerations should not lead us into error of concluding that such men were geniuses merely because they were pathological specimens, and that the only way to produce a genius is to breed disease and defect. It only emphasizes the dangers of external standards of ``fit'' and ``unfit.”
― Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization

“On 14 July, less than six months into Hitler’s chancellorship, the legal basis for forced sterilisations was created by virtue of the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses). According to this law, which came into force on the first day of 1934, someone could be sterilised without their consent if their progeny were expected to have serious physical or mental hereditary defects. Between 1934 and 1945, more than 300,000 men and women in Germany and Austria – where the law came into force on 1 January 1940 – were forcibly sterilised by order of the hereditary health courts specially set up for this purpose. Around 5,000 of them, predominantly women, did not survive the surgery. It was not uncommon for people to commit suicide before or after the procedure. This was particularly true of women, in an evolving political climate that set great store by eugenically fit, prolific motherhood.”
― Alex J. Kay, Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing