Misanthropy

Le Misantrope, 1719 ad.

Misanthropy is a hatred or distrust of the human race, or a disposition to dislike and mistrust other people.

Quotes

• Look! Nobody witnessed the formidable
  Burial of your one final dream.
  Only ingratitude - The Panther -
  Was your inseparable companion!
  Get used to the mud that awaits you!
  Man, on this miserable earth,
  Lives amidst beasts, and sees an inevitable
  Necessity to also turn into a beast.
  Take a match. Light your cigarrete!
  The kiss, friend, is the eve of the spit.
  The hand that cuddles also stones.
  If somebody still pities your suffering,
  stone this vile hand that cuddles you,
  Spit on the mouth that kisses you!
  • Augusto dos Anjos, Versos Íntimos, 1912

• I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.
  • Giuseppe Baretti, February 13, 1766. The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page, retrieved 24 October 2018

• Humans may exceed other animals in their sapient capacities, but we also surpass other species on our destructiveness. Many animals cause harm, but we are the most lethal species ever to have inhabited our planet. It is revealing that we do not refer to this superlative property in identifying ourselves. There is ample evidence that we are Homo pernicious – the dangerous, destructive human.
  • David Benatar, The Misanthropic Argument for Anti-natalism, 2015, p. 38

• Few prospective procreators consider the asthetic impact of their potential children. But how many more producers of excrement and urine, flatulence, menstrual blood and semen, sweat, mucus, vomit, and pus do we really need? How much more human waste do we need to process? How many more corpses do we need to dispose of? It would be an aesthetic improvement if there were fewer people.
  • David Benatar, The Misanthropic Argument for Anti-natalism, 2015, p. 58

• In an era of catastrophe and crisis, the continuation of the human species in a viable or desirable form, is obviously contingent and not a given or necessary good. But considered from the standpoint of animals and the earth, the demise of humanity would be the best imaginable event possible, and the sooner the better. The extinction of Homo sapiens would remove the malignancy ravaging the planet, destroy a parasite consuming its host, shut down the killing machines, and allow the earth to regenerate while permitting new species to evolve.
  • Steven Best, The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (2014) p. 165

• He who converses little with men is rarely a misanthrope. Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not at all philosophy, which produces hatred of mankind. A misanthrope who retires from the world loses his misanthropy in solitude.
  • Giacomo Leopardi, trans. James Thomson, Essays, Dialogues, and Thoughts (Operette Morali and Pensieri) of Giacomo Leopardi (1978), text LXXXIX, p. 377 ISBN 9780883555644

• I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.
  • Mr. Lockwood in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (Ch. III).

• My hate is general, I detest all men;
  Some because they are wicked and do evil,
  Others because they tolerate the wicked,
  Refusing them the active vigorous scorn
  Which vice should stimulate in virtuous minds.
  • Molière, in The Misanthrope (1666)

• Human life is nothing but a perpetual illusion; there is nothing but mutual deception and flattery. No one talks about us in our presence as he would in our absence. Human relations are only based on this mutual deception; and few friendships would survive if everyone knew what his friend said about him behind his back, even though he spoke sincerely and dispassionately. Man is therefore nothing but disguise, falsehood and hypocrisy, both in himself and with regard to others. He does not want to be told the truth. He avoids telling it to others, and all these tendencies, so remote from justice and reason, are naturally rooted in his heart.
  • Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1995), [978] ISBN 9780141915647

• ...but first there is a certain experience we must be careful to avoid...we must not become misologues, as people become misanthropes. There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse. Misology and misanthropy arise in the same way. Misanthropy comes when a man without knowledge or skill has placed great trust in someone and believes him to be altogether truthful, sound and trustworthy; then, a short time afterwards he finds him to be wicked and unreliable, and then this happens in another case; when one has frequently had that experience, especially with those whom one believed to be one's closest friends, then, in the end, after many blows, one comes to hate all men and to believe that no one is sound in any way at all...This is a shameful state of affairs... and obviously due to an attempt to have human relations without any skill in human affairs.
  • Plato, Phaedo 89d–e

• I am misanthropos, and hate mankind
  For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog
  That I might love thee something.
  • William Shakespeare, in Timon of Athens, Act IV, Scene III, Timon to Alcibiades

• Timon will to the woods; where he shall find
  The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.
  The gods confound — hear me, you good gods all —
  The Athenians both within and out that wall!
  And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow
  To the whole race of mankind, high and low!
  Amen.
  • William Shakespeare, in Timon of Athens, Act IV, Scene I

• The world belongs to those who don’t feel. The essential condition for being a practical man is the absence of sensibility. The chief requisite for the practical expression of life is will, since this leads to action. Two things can thwart action – sensibility and analytic thought, the latter of which is just thought with sensibility. All action is by nature the projection of our personality on to the external world, and since the external world is largely and firstly made up of human beings, it follows that this projection of personality is basically a matter of crossing other people’s path, of hindering, hurting or overpowering them, depending on the form our action takes. To act, then, requires a certain incapacity for imagining the personalities of others, their joys and sufferings. Sympathy leads to paralysis. The man of action regards the external world as composed exclusively of inert matter – either intrinsically inert, like a stone he walks on or kicks out of his path, or inert like a human being who couldn’t resist him and thus might as well be a stone as a man since, like a stone, he was walked on or kicked out of the way. The best example of the practical man is the military strategist, in whom extreme concentration of action is joined to its extreme importance. All life is war, and the battle is life’s synthesis. The strategist is a man who plays with lives like the chess player with chess pieces. What would become of the strategist if he thought about how each of his moves brings night to a thousand homes and grief to three thousand hearts? What would become of the world if we were human? If man really felt, there would be no civilization. Art gives shelter to the sensibility that action was obliged to forget. Art is Cinderella, who stayed at home because that’s how it had to be.
  • Fernando Pessoa, trans. Richard Zenith, The Book of Disquiet (2002), text 303, ISBN 978-0141183046

• Because the world is perfidious, I am going into mourning
  • Inscryption from The Misanthrope (Bruegel) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, trans "Om dat de werelt is soe ongetru / Daer om gha ic in den ru"

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Disputed

• I don't have prejudice, I hate everyone equally.
  • Attributed to H. L. Mencken, in The Mammoth Book of Jokes (2006) edited by Geoff Tibbals; no earlier citation yet located.