Childfree Quotes

I like to collect quotes on a wide variety of topics, and I thought it would be fun to start a quote page on my blog. I’ll continue adding as I find more, and I hope my readers will add too.

Some of these quotes are from people/organizations with whom I don’t share much philosophy (such as VHEMT) but are nonetheless spot on. Please don’t read more into those quotes than is intended. And while some quotes are serious, others are intended to be funny – so please keep a sense of humor about you! :)

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If the act of procreation were neither the outcome of a desire nor accompanied by feelings of pleasure, but a matter to be decided on the basis of purely rational considerations, is it likely the human race would still exist? Would each of us not rather have felt so much pity for the coming generation as to prefer to spare it the burden of existence, or at least not wish to take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?
-Schopenhauer (1788-1860), in his essay On the Suffering of the World

It goes beyond elitism for us to create replicas of ourselves while tens of thousands of Others' children die from lack of care each day.
-VHEMT.org

I have never even idly thought for a single passing second that it might make my life nicer to have a small, rude, incontinent person follow me around screaming and making me buy them stuff for the rest of my life.
-Tim Kreider, “The Referendum” (NY Times, 9/18/09)

Oh, I sacrificed my beautiful body for nothing; this must be what it's like to a have a baby.
-C. Montgomery Burns (“The Simpsons”)

'It takes a village.' That's just a saying. Us other villagers are busy, okay? I have other things to do in the village.
-Bill Maher ("Be More Cynical" on HBO)

It’s strange to have a creation out there, a deeply mutated version of yourself, running loose and screwing everything up. I wonder if this is how parents feel?
-Dexter Morgan (“Dexter,” season 2, episode 12, “British Invasion”)

I am old and have lived a long time but I will never understand why people agree to become parents so casually. I do more research when I choose a vacuum cleaner.
-Jane, The Childfree Life

…all this droning on about baby and toddler world is not, in the long run, doing any of us any good. For me, and many other women, it's boring and selfish, and it implicitly casts judgment on the way we choose to live our lives. For men, it just confirms what many of them secretly think, which is that women, bottom line, are only really interested in one thing, and that is making babies, and why should they be promoted or taken seriously or paid well?
- Rachel Cooke (guardian.co.uk, 2/8/09)

Most of my married friends now have children, the rewards of which appear to be exclusively intangible and, like the mysteries of some gnostic sect, incommunicable to outsiders. In fact it seems from the outside as if these people have joined a dubious cult: they claim to be much happier and more fulfilled than ever before, even though they live in conditions of appalling filth and degradation, deprived of the most basic freedoms and dignity, and owe unquestioning obedience to a capricious and demented master.
-Tim Kreider, “The Referendum” (NY Times, 9/18/09)

Reason #6,437 why I'm happily childfree: the satisfaction of knowing that I'll never become a walking septic tank.
-Dar1a, The Childfree Life, in response to the fact that "by the 36th week of pregnancy, amniotic fluid is comprised of primarily urine and dead skin cells."

Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.
-King Solomon, Ecclesiastes 4:1-3

Parenthood is not a Caribbean cruise, it's a big, expensive, loud, smelly, irritating and thankless job.
-Gibson, The Childfree Life

They had assumed human form in order to visit Earth, I suppose for amusement. But in vulgar human fashion they proceeded to conceive a child. And then like mawkish humans, they became attached to it. What is it about those squirming little infants that you find so appealing?
-Q (Star Trek The Next Generation, "True Q")

Children are an expensive hobby.
-a facebook acquaintance, regarding her child

The choice to have children calls for more careful justification and thought than the choice not to have children because procreation creates a dependent, needy, and vulnerable human being whose future may be at risk. The individual who chooses childlessness takes the ethically less risky path. After all, nonexistent people can’t suffer from not being created.
-Christine Overall, "Think Before You Breed" (NY Times, 6/17/12)

[I]t’s not simply that a baby puts a whole person-ful of problems into the world. It takes a useful person out of the world as well. Minimum. Often two. When you have young children, you are useless to the forces of revolution and righteousness for years.
-Caitlin Moran, How to be a Woman (quote is based on her experience having children)

I love her in that way that isn’t a friend or a lover or anything besides a child. Even though she’s not mine. And maybe for me that was the most important part of not having a child. Learning to love and not want to possess.
-Beth Lapides, "I Just Don't Want a Child" (from time.com, 8/1/13)

Lisa: Who says we're going to have kids of our own?
Bart: Not me man, this cycle of jerks has to end!
-Lisa and Bart Simpson ("The Simpsons")