Procreation Quotes

• There is a divine moment in our lives when we all become one. It's called procreation, and it is reborn, continually and forever.

  Dirk Benedict

  Forever, Moments, Divine

  49 Copy quote

• One of the aims of sexual union is procreation - the creation by reproduction of an image of itself, of the union.

  Mortimer Adler

  Unions, Creation, Aim

  8 Copy quote

• It would be one of the greatest triumphs of humanity, one of the most tangible liberations from the constraints of nature to which mankind is subject, if we could succeed in raising the responsible act of procreating children to the level of a deliberate and intentional activity and in freeing it from its entanglement with the necessary satisfaction of a natural need.

  Sigmund Freud

  Nature, Children, Humanity

  Sigmund Freud, Carrie Lee Rothgeb (1962). “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Early psycho-analytic publications”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Music, People, Mechanic

  10 Copy quote

• Willful sterility is, from the standpoint of the nation, from the standpoint of the human race, the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race death; a sin for which there is no atonement. No man, no woman, can shirk the primary duties of life, whether for love of ease and pleasure, or for any other cause, and retain his or her self-respect.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Love, Men, Race

  United States. President (1901-1909 : Roosevelt), Theodore Roosevelt (1906). “Message of the President of the United States Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the Second Session of the Fifty-ninth Congress”

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Luckless is the country in which the symbols of procreation are the objects of shame, while the agents of destruction are honored! And yet you call that member your pudendum, or shameful part, as if there were anything more glorious than creating life, or anything more atrocious than taking it away.

  Cyrano de Bergerac

  Country, Creating Life, Agents

  9 Copy quote

• Do not breed. Nothing gives less pleasure than childbearing. Pregnancies are damaging to health, spoil the figure, wither the charms, and it's the cloud of uncertainty forever hanging over these events that darkens a husband's mood.

  Marquis de Sade

  Husband, Pregnancy, Clouds

  7 Copy quote

• Cloning represents a very clear, powerful, and immediate example in which we are in danger of turning procreation into manufacture.

  Leon Kass

  Powerful, Example, Cloning

  68 Copy quote

• The abortion controversy is important for what it says about our stance toward procreation and children altogether.

  Leon Kass

  Children, Abortion, Important

  9 Copy quote

• Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.

  Walter Benjamin

  Substance, Conquer, Destruction

  Walter Benjamin (2016). “One-Way Street”, p.28, Harvard University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The conclusion, therefore, is that there are two major forces in society: love, which multiplies the species, and the nose, which subordinates it to the individual. Procreation, equilibrium.

  Machado de Assis

  Two, Noses, Individual

  Machado de Assis (1952). “Epitaph of a Small Winner”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Shouldn't we be against procreation at this point in time? With overpopulation and the strain on the resources on this planet? Shouldn't we reward people who don't spawn?

  Bill Maher

  People, Rewards, Resources

  6 Copy quote

• The art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive, that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Art, Sex, Actors

  Dell' Anatomia Fogli B (transl. Edward MacCurdy in The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci Vol. 1, Ch. III)

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Marriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordained toward the procreation and education of children. Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and contribute in the highest degree to their parents' welfare.

  Pope Paul VI

  Children, Parent, Degrees

  4 Copy quote

• Media mystifications should not obfuscate a simple, perceivable fact; Black teenage girls do not create poverty by having babies. Quite the contrary, they have babies at such a young age precisely because they are poor--because they do not have the opportunity to acquire an education, because meaningful, well-paying jobs and creative forms of recreation are not accessible to them ... because safe, effective forms of contraception are not available to them.

  Angela Davis

  Girl, Meaningful, Baby

  Angela Y. Davis (2011). “Women, Culture & Politics”, p.26, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I should consent to breed under pressure, if I were convinced in any way of the reasonableness of reproducing the species. But my nerves and the nerves of any woman I could live with three months, would produce only a victim... lacking in impulse, a mere bundle of discriminations. If I were wealthy I might subsidize a stud of young peasants, or a tribal group in Tahiti.

  Ezra Pound

  Way, Pressure, Months

  Ezra Pound (1958). “Pavannes and Divagations”, p.55, New Directions Publishing

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• As for procreation, no one in his right mind would say that it is the only activity devoid of a praiseworthy incentive. Those who reproduce, then, should not feel unfairly culled as the worst conspirators against the human race. Every one of us is culpable in keeping the conspiracy alive, which is all right with most people.

  Thomas Ligotti

  Race, People, Mind

  "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror". Book by Thomas Ligotti, 2010.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Christianity has ever been the enemy of human love; it has forever cursed and expelled and crucified the one passion which sweetens and smiles on human life, which makes the desert blossom as the rose, and which glorifies the common things and common ways of earth. It made of this, the angel of life, a shape of sin and darkness ... Even in the unions which it reluctantly permitted, it degraded and dwarfed the passion which it could not entirely exclude, and permitted it coarsely to exist for the mere necessity of procreation.

  Ouida

  Angel, Passion, Rose

  Ouida (1896). “Views and Opinions”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lust desireth not procreation, but pleasure only.

  Anselm of Canterbury

  Lust, Pleasure

  49 Copy quote

• The second great channel through which the impulse towards the control of procreation for the elevation of the race is entering into practical life is by the general adoption, by the educated—of methods for the prevention of conception except when conception is deliberately desired.

  Havelock Ellis

  Sex, Race, Adoption

  Havelock Ellis (1910). “Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Sex in relation to society”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sex itself only only exists in relation to procreation. That's one of the reasons why I sometimes object, and it's just a theoretical objection, but it's worth thinking about, to the whole notion that one calls what people of the same sex do, sexual relations. As a matter of fact, they have precisely turned their back on sexual relations, in order to engage in acts of mutual pleasure that have nothing whatsoever to do with sexuality...

  Alan Keyes

  Sex, Thinking, Order

  Alan Keyes' National Federation of Republican Assemblies Speech, www.keyesarchives.com. August 31, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for purposes of procreation and pleasure. Fermat’s last theorem, by contrast, asserts that when x, y and z are whole numbers each raised to power of n, the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n is greater than 2.

  Tom Stoppard

  Sex, Two, Numbers

  Tom Stoppard (2013). “Arcadia”, p.11, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are people who think contraception is immoral because the object of copulation is procreation. In a similar way there are people who think the only reason to read a book is to write a book.

  Helen DeWitt

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Helen DeWitt (2016). “The Last Samurai”, p.18, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• An intelligent couple can read their Darwin and know that the ultimate reason for their sexual urges is procreation. They know that the woman cannot conceive because she is on the pill. Yet they find that their sexual desire is in no way diminished by the knowledge. Sexual desire is sexual desire and its force, in an individual's psychology, is independent of the ultimate Darwinian pressure that drove it. It is a strong urge which exists independently of its ultimate rationale.

  Richard Dawkins

  Strong, Couple, Independent

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.253, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Marital intercourse is certainly holy, lawful and praiseworthy in itself and profitable to society, yet in certain circumstances it can prove dangerous, as when through excess the soul is made sick with venial sin, or through the violation and perversion of its primary end, killed by mortal sin; such perversion, detestable in proportion to its departure from the true order, being always mortal sin, for it is never lawful to exclude the primary end of marriage which is the procreation of children.

  Saint Francis de Sales

  Sex, Children, Order

  17 Copy quote