80 Nihilism Quotes

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Famous Nihilism Quotes

Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity. — Ray Brassier

Nihilism: any aim is lacking, any answer to the question "why" is lacking. What does nihilism mean?--that the supreme values devaluate themselves. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. — Victor Hugo

That is the most extreme form of nihilism: nothingness (the "meaningless") eternally! — Friedrich Nietzsche

In Nietzsche's view nihilism is not a Weltanschauung that occurs at some time and place or another; it is rather the basic character of what happens in Occidental history. — Martin Heidegger

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate. — Albert Camus

the problem is not suffering itself or oblivion itself but the depraved meaninglessness of these things, the absolutely inhuman nihilism of suffering. — John Green

A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing , but one who does not believe in what exists. — Albert Camus

Nothing is more real than nothing. - Samuel Beckett

Nothing is more real than nothing. — Samuel Beckett

Tragedy is a vision of nihilism, a heroic or ennobling vision of nihilism. — Susan Sontag

Nothing exists; even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others. — Gorgias

For the existentials, negation is their God. To be precise, that god is maintained only through the negation of human reason. But, like suicides, gods change with men. — Albert Camus

The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism. — Irving Kristol

Nothing exists but atoms and the void. — Democritus

If all men lead mechanical, unpoetical lives, this is the real nihilism, the real undoing of the world. — Reginald Horace Blyth

Short Nihilism Quotes

  • Everything in the world displeases me: but, above all, my displeasure in everything displeases me. — Friedrich Nietzsche
  • What can be broken, should be broken. — Dmitry Pisarev
  • There is no one as dangerous as he or she who has nothing to lose. — Rebecca Solnit
  • Destroy or be destroyed-there is no middle way! Let us then be the destroyers! — Mikhail Bakunin
  • The point is there ain't no point. — Cormac McCarthy
  • Say what you want about the deaf. — Jimmy Carr
  • If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him. — Mikhail Bakunin
  • All good things were formerly bad things; every original sin has turned into an original virtue. — Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Nihilism is best done by professionals. — Iggy Pop
  • Courage is impulsive; it is narcissism tempered with nihilism. — Ayelet Waldman

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Nihil Quotes

There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both. — Emile M. Cioran

The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism. — Albert Camus

I am interested in a political art, that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures and uncertain ending - an art (and a politics) in which optimism is kept in check, and nihilism at bay. — William Kentridge

Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning. — Octavio Paz

Today's terrorism is not the product of a traditional history of anarchism, nihilism, or fanaticism. It is instead the contemporary partner of globalization. — Jean Baudrillard

Show me a population that is deeply religious and I will show you a servile population, content with whips and chains, ... content to eat the bread of sorrow and drink the waters of affliction. — Hubert Harrison

Do you know what punishments I've endured for my crimes, my sins? None. I am proof of the absurdity of men's most treasured abstractions. A just universe wouldn't tolerate my existence. — Brent Weeks

Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Liberal capitalism is not at all the Good of humanity. Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism. — Alain Badiou

What every artist should try to prevent is the car, in which is our civilized life, plunging over the side of the precipice -- the exhibitionist extremist promoter driving the whole bag of tricks into a nihilistic nothingness or zero. — Wyndham Lewis

People Writing About Nihilism

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche
quotes on god, love and morality

2473 32550
Read quotes by Albert Camus

Albert Camus
quotes on love, life and absurdity

975 9693
Read quotes by Mikhail Bakunin

Mikhail Bakunin
quotes on education, religion and love

85 1394
Read quotes by Ray Brassier

Ray Brassier
quotes on life, love and objects

13 41
Read quotes by Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo
quotes on love, death and life

975 8205
Read quotes by Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger
quotes on death, love

91 965

More Nihilism Quotes

All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word "no." To "no" there is only one answer and that is "yes." Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. Man lives more by affirmation than by bread. — Victor Hugo

Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

God is Dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. And we - we still have to vanquish his shadow, too. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I think there is an element of nihilism about, but I don't think most artists feel their work is meaningless. — Leonard Baskin

[S]ince there is no wrong or right, you just reap what you sow. — Peter Murphy

For a politics of emancipation, the enemy that is to be feared most is not repression at the hands of the established order. It is the interiority of nihilism, and the unbounded cruelty that can come with its emptiness. — Alain Badiou

Science, Nietzsche had warned, is becoming a factory, and the result will be ethical nihilism. — Rollo May

There are many options for how images can aggregate not to nihilism, but to significance, or to meaning. — Cynthia Daignault

The Only cure for nihilism is for liberal democratic societies - their electorates, their judiciary, and their political leadership- to insist that force is legitimate only to the degree that it serves defensible poltical goals. Thus implies a constant exercise of due diligence. — Michael Ignatieff

To think is to say 'no.' — Emile Chartier

Meanings generating meanings - the process has backed us into a particular corner, a kind of cave, where sunlight seldom enters. — Tarthang Tulku

Like other lifeforms, we [humans] exist only to replicate ourselves. — George Monbiot

No system has ever as yet existed which did not in some form involve the exploitation of some human beings for the advantage of others. — John Dewey

Peter had a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... a widespread secularization increasingly descends into a moral, intellectual, and spiritual nihilism that denies not only the One who is the Truth but the very idea of truth itself. — Charles Colson

Those are my enemies: they want to overthrow and to construct nothing themselves. They say: "All that is worthless"--and want to create no value themselves. — Friedrich Nietzsche

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