Steven Wagaman

“Never to have been born is best But if we must see the light, the next best Is quickly returning whence we came. When youth departs, with all its follies, Who does not stagger under evils? Who escapes them?
Sophocles'
Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, The best would be never to have been born at all.
Heinrich Heine2”
― David Benatar, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence

“As we have seen, nobody is lucky enough not to be born, everybody is unlucky enough to have been born – and particularly bad luck it is.”
― David Benatar, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence

“On my view there is no net benefit to coming into existence and thus coming into existence is never worth its costs.”
― David Benatar, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence

“Creating new people, by having babies, is so much a part of human life that it is rarely thought even to require a justification. Indeed, most people do not even think about whether they should or should not make a baby. They just make one. In other words, procreation is usually the consequence of sex rather than the result of a decision to bring people into existence. Those who do indeed decide to have a child might do so for any number of reasons, but among these reasons cannot be the interests of the potential child. One can never have a child for that child’s sake.”
― David Benatar, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence