David Benatar Quotes (13 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

David Benatar: 13 quotes4 likes

Famous David Benatar Quotes

“A pessimistic book is most likely to bring some solace to those who already have those views but who feel alone or pathological as a result. They may gain some comfort from recognizing that there are others who share their views and that these views are supported by good arguments.”

David Benatar

Source: The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions (2017), Introduction, p. 14

“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

Source: Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (2006), Introduction, p. 6

“The question is not whether humans will become extinct, but rather when they will. If the anti-natalist arguments are correct, it would be better, all things being equal, if this happened sooner rather than later for, the sooner it happens, the more suffering and misfortune will be avoided.”

David Benatar

" Kids? Just say no: You don’t have to dislike children to see the harms done by having them. There is a moral case against procreation https://aeon.co/essays/having-children-is-not-life-affirming-its-immoral", Aeon (2017)

“Life's big questions are big in the sense that they are momentous. However, contrary to appearances, they are not big in the sense of being unanswerable. It is only that the answers are generally unpalatable. There is no great mystery, but there is plenty of horror.”

David Benatar

Source: The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions (2017), Introduction, p. 7

“In a sentence: Life is bad, but so is death. Of course, life is not bad in every way. Neither is death bad in every way. However, both life and death are, in crucial respects, awful. Together, they constitute an existential vise—the wretched grip that enforces our predicament.”

David Benatar

Source: The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions (2017), Introduction, pp. 1–2

“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.”

David Benatar

Source: Debating Procreation: Is It Wrong To Reproduce? (2015), p. 65

David Benatar Quotes

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

David Benatar

Source: Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (2006), Introduction, p. 13

“It is these very conditions that facilitate the emergence of new infectious diseases and that also inflict horrific harms on animals — being kept in confined conditions and then butchered. Simply put, the coronavirus pandemic is a result of our gross maltreatment of animals.”

David Benatar

"Our Cruel Treatment of Animals Led to the Coronavirus" https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/animal-cruelty-coronavirus.html, The New York Times, April 13, 2020.

“There are some who will characterize my view as “nihilistic."”

David Benatar

Left unqualified, that characterization is false. My view of cosmic meaning is indeed nihilistic. I think that there is no cosmic meaning. If I am right about that, then calling me a nihilist about cosmic meaning is entirely appropriate. However, my view is not nihilistic about all meaning because I believe that there is meaning from some perspectives. Our lives can be meaningful, but only from the limited, terrestrial perspectives. There is a crucial perspective—the cosmic one—from which our lives are irredeemably meaningless. In thinking about meaning in life, two broad kinds of mistakes are made. There are those who think that the only relevant meaning is what is attainable. They ignore our cosmic meaninglessness or they find ways either to discount questions about cosmic meaning or to minimize the importance of cosmic meaninglessness. The other kind of mistake is to think that because we are cosmically insignificant, “nothing matters,” where the implication is that nothing matters from any perspective. If we lack cosmic meaning but have other kinds of meaning, then some things do matter, even though they only matter from some perspectives. It does make a difference, for example, whether or not one is adding to the vast amounts of harm on earth, even though that makes no difference to the rest of the cosmos.

p. 32
The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions (2017), Meaninglessness

“A third belief about males has both descriptive and normative forms. It is the belief that males are, or at least should be, tough. They are thought to be able to endure pain and other hardships better than women. Whether or not they do take pain and other hardships “like a man,” it is certainly thought that they should. When it is said that they should take pain and hardships “like a man,” the word “man” clearly means more than “adult male human,” but rather one who stoically, unflinchingly bears whatever pain or suffering he experiences, including that which is inflicted on him precisely because he is a “man.””

David Benatar

This is true even when he is not a man, but rather a boy. Boys are taught early that they must act like men. Crying, they are told, is what girls do. They are discouraged from expressing hurt, sadness, fear, disappointment, insecurity, embarrassment and other such emotions. It is because males are thought to be and are expected to be tough that they may be treated more harshly. Thus, corporal punishment and various other forms of harshness may be inflicted on them but often not on females, who are purportedly more sensitive.
Source: The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys (2012), Chapter 3, part 1: Beliefs about Males

“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.”

David Benatar

Source: Chapter 1: The Misanthropic Argument for Anti-natalism https://books.google.com/books?id=J6dBCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA44&pg=PA55#v=onepage&q&f=false, 2015, p. 55 <br class="br">Source: Permissible Progeny? The Morality of Procreation and Parenting (2015)

“Some of the harm that humans cause to other humans and to animals is mediated by the destructive effect that humans have on the environment. For much of human history, the damage was local. Groups of humans fouled their immediate environment. In recent centuries the human impact has increased exponentially and the threat is now to the global environment. The increased threat is a product of two interacting factors–the exponential growth of the human population combined with significant increases in negative effects per capita. The latter is the result of industrialization and increased consumption.”

David Benatar

Permissible Progeny? The Morality of Procreation and Parenting (2015) <br class="br">Source: Chapter 1: The Misanthropic Argument for Anti-natalism https://books.google.com/books?id=J6dBCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA44&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false, p. 48

“Our species is prone to a flattering view of itself. Humans have regarded themselves as the pinnacle of creation, formed by and in the image of an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God, and inhabiting a planet at the center of the universe—a planet around which all others revolve. Science has done much to debunk some of these ideas. We now know that our planet is not at the center of the universe: the earth revolves around the sun rather than vice versa. And we know—or at least some of us do—that we are Johnny-come-lately products of a long, blind evolutionary process.”

David Benatar