Philosophy

"There's a reason for this, there's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason it will never ever ever be fixed. It's never going to get any better. Don't look for it. Be happy with what you've got... because the owners of this country don’t want that. I'm talking about the real owners now... the real owners. The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests..."

"If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty."

"ONLY THE MADMAN IS ABSOLUTELY SURE."

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one."

"Une hypothèse qui permet de prévoir certains effets qui se reproduisent toujours ressemble absolument à une vérité démontrée. Le système de Newton ne repose guère sur un autre fondement. Si en réalité et de l aveu du. [A hypothesis which permits the prediction of certain effects that always reoccur under certain conditions does, in its way amount to a demonstrable certainty. Even the Newtonian system had no more than such a foundation.]"

"I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil."

"The certainties of one age are the problems of the next."

"Tiedens and Linton (2001) posit that, ―the experience associated with some emotions, such as anger and contentment, can lead to feelings of certainty, while emotions such as surprise, fear and worry can lead individuals to feel uncertain or unsure about their current situation (973). As Tiedens and Linton (2001) argue, the uncertainty which emerges from affect leads individuals to a state of ―bounded rationality. According to Croskerry (2002), ―this is significant for reasoning ability in that individuals in a state of emotionally aroused bounded rationality may fail to consider other important information presented once they have reviewed information that satisfies their own interest (1186). Particularly, individuals might miss specific details or cues needed to better reason. Consequently, when individuals are in a heightened affective state, they might be less likely to process information efficiently, and subsequently, be incapable of attaining a rational conclusion."

"It is said to await certainty is to await eternity."

"Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality."

"Since we can never know anything for sure, it is simply not worth searching for certainty; but it is well worth searching for truth; and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we have to correct them."

"What is known for certain is dull."

"What certainty can there be in a Philosophy which consists in as many Hypotheses as there are Phenomena to be explained. To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, & leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing."

"The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof."

"As mathematical and absolute certainty is seldom to be attained in human affairs, reason and public utility require that judges and all mankind in forming their opinions of the truth of facts should be regulated by the superior number of the probabilities on the one side or the other whether the amount of these probabilities be expressed in words and arguments or by figures and numbers."

"There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life."

"Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul When hot for certainties in this our life!"

"It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed."

"We may not be able to get certainty, but we can get probability, and half a loaf is better than no bread."

"A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty."

"I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably."

"Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man."

"A common fallacy in much of the adverse criticism to which science is subjected today is that it claims certainty, infallibility and complete emotional objectivity. It would be more nearly true to say that it is based upon wonder, adventure and hope."

"Certainty has become a consumer product. It is marketed the world over–by insurance companies, investment advisers, election campaigns, and the medical industry."

"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers."

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

"No disorders have employed so many quacks, as those that have no cure; and no sciences have exercised so many quills, as those that have no certainty."

"Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness, it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. Immediately we abandon to God, and do the duty that lies nearest, He packs our life with surprises all the time."

"Because I do not want to commit the crime of giving life to beings who later may be unhappy and curse the moment of their birth."

"For me, a desert island is no tragedy, neither is a deserted planet."

"To bear children into this world is like carrying wood into a burning house."

"Mankind ought to end its existence of its own will."

"You got me. But my son you will not get. You were committing a fateful mistake when assigning even procreation to my will. And you did not do this out of love..., but rather to burden me with the heaviest of all responsibilities...: Am I to perpetuate this species or not? And from now on I will ask no longer what you want; rather you shall ask what I want. And I will no longer offer further sacrifices to the God of life. I will punish you with the ability you bequeathed to me in order to torment me; I will turn my clairvoyance against you and thus bereaving you of your victims. And the abused millions will stand behind me like a plough... And evermore will two people create one human being... Thus you will feel your powerlessness begging me on your bloody knees."

"Above all, we must make the reproductive question ethically relevant. A coin is turned around before it is handed to the beggar, yet a child is unflinchingly tossed into cosmic bruteness."

"No future triumph or metamorphosis can justify the pitiful blighting of a human being against his will."

"The sign of doom is written on your brows – how long will ye kick against the pinpricks? But there is one conquest and one crown, one redemption and one solution. Know yourselves – be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye."

"Simply put, upon a nihilistic basis, I deeply believe that making children is nothing but a hopeless action. This thought can not possibly be removed, and I no longer care to remove it. In terms of pleasure, humans are unpredictable when they will drown in it, and for this reason, one should not create children to avoid getting them entangled in the mess. Children are, horrifyingly, just thrown out into this world as a result of egoistical adults who craves pleasure, with the child's life having attributed meaning afterwards so arbitrarily."

"One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that."

"Not being born is the first step to happiness. If someone by unhappy accident is here on Earth, one thing should comfort them; they will return to the original state."

"Every form of fecundity is loathsome, and no one who is honest with himself feels bound to provide for the continuity of the human race. And what we do not realise to be a duty, is not a duty. On the contrary, it is immoral to procreate a human being for any secondary reason, to bring a being into the limitations of humanity, the conditions made for him by his parentage; the fundamental question why the possible freedom and spontaneity of a human being is limited is that he was begotten in such a limited fashion. That the human race should persist is of no interest whatsoever to reason; he who would perpetuate humanity would perpetuate the problem and the guilt; the only problem and the only guilt."

"Life has so few charms! And yet we desire it. No more pleasure, no more power, in the horrors of death. A dead lion is not worth a midge that breathes. O unfortunate mortal! Whether your soul is enjoying the moment given to you, or whether death is ending it, both are torture. It is better not to have been born."

"We cannot allow ourselves to spuriously rationalize away the suffering that takes place in nature, and to forget the victims of the horrors of nature merely because that reality does not fit into our convenient moral theories, theories that ultimately just serve to make us feel consistent and good about ourselves in the face of an incomprehensibly bad reality."

"If humanity is to minimize suffering in the future, it must engage with the world, not opt out of it."

"All conditions and all circumstances seem equally unfortunate to me, from the angel to the oyster. The grievous thing is to be born."

"In any case, it is morally preferable not to produce a child. This requires that in any individual encounter, and by any institutional activity in education, mass media, economic and legal policy, people should be discouraged from having children. If such tendencies are successful enough, the number of men on earth may begin to decrease, and if such development continues long enough, the human race will disappear. This, however, would not at all be a deplorable consequence according to Narveson's and my own opinion: the existence of mankind is not a value in itself. On the contrary, if mankind ceases to exist, all suffering is extinguished perfectly, which no other human endeavour will be able to bring about. On the other hand, of course, all happy experiences of men will disappear. But this, according to Narveson's conclusion, would not be deplorable, because no human subject would exist which would be deprived of the happy experiences."

"Adoption could help if practised on a much larger scale than nowadays, such that any child not definitely wanted by its parents, or born in unfavourable social circumstances, could be adopted by people who want children but do not want to create them for that purpose."

"All this disgrace derive from being born, which therefore is the greatest of all catastrophes."

"Those I've most loved are my grandma Raquel Pizano and my dog Bruja. I also loved my dad. But after all, he is guilty of imposing on me the burden of life. Life's a burden, it's a curse. Those who I loved, now dead, drag me to the grave. It's very hard to carry on without them. The only way I can live is by forgetting them."

"Heaven and happiness do not exist. That's your parents' way to justify the crime of having brought you into this world. What exists is reality, the tough reality, this slaughterhouse we've come to die in, if not to kill and to eat the animals, our fellow creatures. Therefore, do not reproduce, do not repeat the crimes committed against you, do not give back the same, evil paid with evil, as imposing life is the ultimate crime. Do not disturb the unborn, let them be in the peace of nothingness, anyway we'll all eventually go back there, so why beat around the bush?"

"If we can't genetically fix our nature I agree with Zapffe. To leave world to a deserted behind is better than to continue this grotesque carousel of procreation."