David Benatar (born 1966)

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.

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

David Benatar is a South African philosopher, academic, and author. He is best known for his work in moral philosophy and for advancing the position of antinatalism, the view that coming into existence is a serious harm. He is the author of Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (2006), in which he argues that procreation is always morally wrong because it imposes harm by bringing sentient beings into existence. Central to this view is his asymmetry argument, which holds that the absence of pain is good even if no one benefits from it, while the absence of pleasure is not bad unless someone is deprived of it.

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René Descartes (1596–1650)

Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagée : car chacun pense en être si bien pourvu, que ceux même qui sont les plus difficiles à contenter en toute autre chose, n'ont point coutume d'en désirer plus qu'ils en ont.

— Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.

René Descartes was a French philosopher, scientist, logician, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science during the Renaissance era. Mathematics was paramount to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

Nor mourn the unalterable Days That Genius goes and Folly stays.

— In Memoriam E. B. E., st. 9

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche thought he was "the most gifted of the Americans", and Walt Whitman called Emerson his "master".

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Slavoj Žižek (born 1949)

'Nobody can rule innocently,' as Saint-Just puts it. And in totalitarianism, the Party becomes again the very subject who, being the immediate embodiment of the People can rule innocently. It is not by accident that the real-socialist countries call themselves ' people's democracies.'

— The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian neo-Marxist philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual.

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Michel Onfray (born 1959)

Those childless by choice love children as much, if not more, than their fertile breeders. When asked why he does not have children, Thales replied, "because of my concern for children."

— Théorie du corps amoureux (2000)

Michel Onfray is a French writer and philosopher with a hedonistic, epicurean and atheist worldview. A highly prolific author on philosophy, he has written over 100 books. His philosophy is mainly influenced by such thinkers as Nietzsche, Epicurus, the Cynic and Cyrenaic schools, as well as French materialism. He has gained notoriety for writing such works as Traité d'athéologie: Physique de la métaphysique, Politique du rebelle: traité de résistance et d'insoumission, Physiologie de Georges Palante, portrait d'un nietzchéen de gauche, La puissance d'exister and La sculpture de soi for which he won the annual Prix Médicis in 1993.

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Walter Kaufmann (1921–1980)

The great artist liberates the emotions and recreates the sheer wonder of childhood without surrendering the development of the intellect.

— From Shakespeare to Existentialism (1959), p. 258

Walter Arnold Kaufmann was a German-American philosopher, translator, and poet. A prolific author, he wrote extensively on a broad range of subjects, such as authenticity and death, moral philosophy and existentialism, theism and atheism, Christianity and Judaism, as well as philosophy and literature. He served more than 30 years as a professor at Princeton University.

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Thomas Vaughan (1621–1666)

That I should profess magic in this discourse and justify the professors of it withal is impiety with many but religion, with me. It is a conscience that I have learned from authors greater than myself and scriptures greater than both.



Thomas Vaughan was a Welsh clergyman, philosopher, and alchemist, who wrote in English. He is now remembered for his work in the field of natural magic. He also published under the pseudonym Eugenius Philalethes.

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Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)

There can be no freedom without freedom to fail.

— The Ordeal of Change (1963), Ch. 12: "Concerning Individual Freedom"

Eric Hoffer was an American philosopher and social critic. A conservative moderate with an atypical working-class background, Hoffer wrote ten books over his career and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, The True Believer (1951), was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that The Ordeal of Change (1963) was his finest work. The Eric Hoffer Book Award is an international literary prize established in his honor. The University of California, Berkeley awards an annual literary prize named jointly for Hoffer.

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John Fiske (1842–1901)

Man does not dwell at the centre of things, but is the denizen of an obscure and tiny speck of cosmical matter quite invisible amid the innumerable throng of flaming suns that make up our galaxy.

— The Destiny of Man Viewed in the Light of His Origin (1884), Ch. 1, p. 15

John Fiske was an American philosopher and historian. He was heavily influenced by Herbert Spencer and applied Spencer's concepts of evolution to his own writings on linguistics, philosophy, religion, and history.

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Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009)

I, then a young and omniscient student (alas, I was soon to lose both these virtues)...

— Metaphysical Horror (1988)

Leszek Kołakowski was a Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. He is best known for his critical analysis of contemporary Marxist thought and theory, as in his three-volume history of Marxist philosophy Main Currents of Marxism (1976). In his later work, Kołakowski increasingly focused on religious questions. In his 1986 Jefferson Lecture, he asserted that "we learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are".

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Paul Kurtz (1925–2012)

I think skepticism is an antidote for nonsense –and there's always nonsense in life– and also it's the method for discovering what's true or false. And yes, we should use it throughout life.

— 22:54–23:09

Paul Kurtz was an American scientific skeptic, philosopher and secular humanist. He has been called "the father of secular humanism". He was a professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, having previously also taught at Vassar, Trinity, and Union colleges, and the New School for Social Research.

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