Natalism Quotes

“We all say we want our kids to be happy, only happy, and healthy, but we don't want that. We want them to be like we are, or better than we are. We as humans are very unimaginative in that sense. We aren't equipped for the possibility that they might be worse. But I guess that would be asking too much. It must be an evolutionary stopgap - if we were all so specifically, vividly aware of what might go horribly wrong, we would none of us have children at all.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Killing a person does not lead to nearly as much pain as creating a human being.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Overpopulation is by far the worst kind of pollution.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“It is impossible to bring a child into this world for its own sake.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Parenthood is some people’s subconscious revenge for having been brought into existence without their consent.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“In countless cases, parenthood has been the worst attempt to contribute something positive to the world.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Refusing to have a child is the highest degree of rebellion, after suicide; one of the best uses of the mind; and the best gift to the planet.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Life keeps on making the terrible mistake of making impatient people capable of making children.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“On all of us was forced life; and, on almost all of us, the desire to remain alive.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Being a person is not nearly as overrated as having played a part in the initiation of the process that has led to the being of a person.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Life is an activity with which we kill time while we wait for something, someone, or the mere passage of time to kill us.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“...it is plain that the proportion of celibates was high in the Roman empire and that the fall in the fertility of marriages was going on. It is the childless marriage, the small family system that contemporary writers deplore....'The human harvest was bad,' It was bad in all classes, but the decline was most marked in the upper ranks, the most educated, the most civilized, the potential leaders of the race.”
― Eileen Power, Medieval People

“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