Nihilism is a philosophical concept that holds that there is no significance or value in life.
This viewpoint contends that life lacks fundamental meaning or objective reality questioning many mainstream beliefs and ideals.
Nihilists deny the existence of morality, claiming that moral ideas are baseless and not universally applicable.
They challenge religious beliefs and cultural conventions stating that these structures are only artificial creations used to conceal life’s underlying meaninglessness.
Because the knowledge of life’s supposed meaninglessness can seem overpowering unbridled nihilism can also generate despair or indifference.
It’s a complicated belief system with far-reaching consequences for human identity, ethical frameworks and our view of life itself.
Thought-Provoking Nihilism Quotes
I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze. ~ Ivan Turgenev.
What can be broken, should be broken. ~ Dmitry Pisarev.
Yes, you may be a pessimist or a nihilist, but only in thought – a nihilist at a distance, a pessimist at arm’s length. ~ Le Monde.
Everything is nothing, including the consciousness of nothing. ~ E. M. Cioran.
Nihilism, there’s really nothing to it. ~ Dean Cavanagh.
A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing , but one who does not believe in what exists. ~ Albert Camus.
Famously, there’s not really anywhere to go after nihilism. It’s not progressing toward anything, it’s a statement of outrage, However. ~ Unknown.
Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate. ~ Carol A. Dingle.
Imagine him, further, without faith – a nihilist mystic – and we have the disastrous consummation of the earthly venture. ~ E.M. Cioran.
Just to say ‘Well, God is dead’ in one breath is to say, in another, that nothing means anything. This is the moment of nihilism. Nihilism is the affirmation of meaninglessness. ~ Simon Critchely.
All good things were formerly bad things; every original sin has turned into an original virtue. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche.
I’m a Nietzschean scholar. I’ve read an immense amount about nihilism and existentialism. ~ T. J. Miller.
You don’t realize all the things you have in this world, much more than you need, and you do much less than you can. ~ Roberto Canessa.
I honor Nihilism since it redeems human nature from the suspicion of being utterly vile, made up of heartless oppressors and contented slaves. ~ Wendell Phillips.
Our own civilization has lost its way, and this makes us even more vulnerable to Islamist nihilism. ~ Tom Tancredo.
Related Quotes: 70 Best Glass Half Full Quotes to Be Optimistic in Life and 70 Optimism Quotes to Inspire You and Remove Negativity
Optimistic Nihilism Quotes
Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate. ~ Albert Camus.
I had passed from nihilism to the Church simply because I felt it to be impossible to live without religion, that is, without a knowledge of good and evil beyond the animal instincts. ~ Leo Tolstoy.
Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. ~ Carol A. Dingle.
There must be somebody there, because somebody must have said “Nobody”. ~ A.A. Milne
Nihilism is a natural consequence of a culture or civilization ruled and regulated by categories that mask manipulation, mastery and domination of peoples and nature. ~ Cornel West.
I can’t go on, I’ll go on. ~ Samuel Beckett.
Liberal capitalism is not at all the Good of humanity. Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism. ~ Alain Badiou.
Famously, there’s not really anywhere to go after nihilism. It’s not progressing toward anything, it’s a statement of outrage, however brilliant. ~ Alan Moore.
Nihilism is evidence of life… the last weapons of victims choked and manacled beyond all other resistance. ~ Wendell Phillips.
The skeptic has no illusions about life, nor a vain belief in the promise of immortality. Since this life here and now is all we can know, our most reasonable option is to live it fully. ~ Paul Kurtz.
Belief and seeing are both often wrong. ~ Robert McNamara.
Famously, there’s not really anywhere to go after nihilism. It’s not progressing toward anything, it’s a statement of outrage, however brilliant. ~ Alan Moore.
Best Nihilism Quotes
It is complete nihilism to propose laying down arms in a world where atom bombs are around. It is very simple: there is no way of achieving peace other than with weapons. ~ Karl Popper.
Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. ~ Victor Hugo.
Nihilism, there’s really nothing to it. ~ Dean Cavanagh.
I think there is an element of nihilism about, but I don’t think most artists feel their work is meaningless. ~ Leonard Baskin.
Everything in the world displeases me: but, above all, my displeasure in everything displeases me. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche.
The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism. ~ Irving Kristol.
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 you can get to a point where nihilism, if that’s the right word, is overwhelming, and the basic laws that society has set up – either religious or social laws – become meaningless. ~ Bruce Springsteen.
I believe that we are all, openly or secretly, struggling against one or another kind of nihilism. ~ Ellen Willis.
The problem is not suffering itself or oblivion itself but the depraved meaninglessness of these things, the absolutely inhuman nihilism of suffering. ~ John Green.
If you live today, you breathe in nihilism … it’s the gas you breathe. If I hadn’t had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkiest logical positivist you ever saw right now. ~ Flannery O’Connor.
Nihilism occurs when one comes to recognize that those structures once thought to give meaning to one’s world and life fail to eradicate life’s absurdity. ~ Van Tongeren.
He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram to his tombstone. ~ Oscar Wilde.
For me, the more I think about the problems of the world, I feel I have to be positive. I wouldn’t like to fall into cynicism or nihilism. That’s not in my nature. ~ Manu Chao.
I think you can get to a point where nihilism, if that’s the right word, is overwhelming, and the basic laws that society has set up – either religious or social laws, become meaningless. ~ Bruce Springsteen.
Famous Nihilism Quotes
If all men lead mechanical, unpoetical lives, this is the real nihilism, the real undoing of the world. ~ Reginald Horace Blyth.
I like the idea of a black sun; like a black hole in space, sucking everything into darkness, where we came from, and where We came from.~ Irvine Welsh.
Tragedy is a vision of nihilism, a heroic or ennobling vision of nihilism. ~ Susan Sontag.
Christian theology is a hair’s breadth away from nihilism. ~ John Milbank.
Those who believe in nothing are very, very jealous and angry at those who believe in something. ~ Dennis Prager.
The point is there ain’t no point. ~ Cormac McCarthy.
If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose? ~ Chuck Palahniuk.
Certainty is not to be had. But as we learn this we become not more moral but more resigned. We become nihilists. ~ Allen Wheelis.
Nihilism is best done by professionals. ~ Iggy Pop.
Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity. ~ Ray Brassier.
Nihilism is the righteous and honorable resistance of a people crushed under an iron rule. ~ Wendell Phillips.
There are few things easier than to live badly and to die well. ~ Oscar Wilde.
If you want to scare people, you talk about evil. ~ Noam Chomsky.
Popular Nihilism Quotes
The skeptic may deny your doctrine or attack your church but he cannot honestly ignore the fact that your life has been changed. ~ Charles R. Swindoll.
We are wrong to think of nihilism as bad or as negative or as in any way motivating bad or negative actions. ~ James Tartaglia.
Moral nihilism comes with a price we can now see. ~ Torbjorn Tannsjo.
Nihilism is but the other side of conventionalism; its creed consists of negations of the current so-called positive values, to which it remains bound. ~ Hannah Arendt.
The perfectly ordinary girl and the great philosopher are alike: for both, the smallest triviality can become the vision that wipes out the world. ~ Yukio Mishima.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. ~ William Shakespeare.
Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness. ~ Werner Herzog.
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.
I think there is an element of nihilism about, but I don’t think most artists feel their work is meaningless. ~ Leonard Baskin.
Nihilism is a subject for comedy. ~ Marty Rubin.
Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. ~ Victor Hugo.
Top Nihilism Quotes
Somethingism is better than nihilism. ~ Anthony Marais.
The atheism and nihilism of my earlier years now seems shallow, and even a bit cocky. ~ Anne Rice.
Certainty is not to be had. But as we learn this we become not more moral but more resigned. We become nihilists. ~ Ryan Gosling.
That is the most extreme form of nihilism: nothingness (the “meaningless”) eternally! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche.
Meaning is malleable: take it out, you get nihilism and despair. Put it in, you get sacredness and something most special. ~ Dean Ornish.
My father has taught me not to succumb to nihilism, and my mother has taught me the value of hard work and determination. ~ Michael Tubbs.
Nihilists embrace life’s existence by the acceptance of nothingness. ~ Martijn Budel.
Even nihilists put sugar in their coffee to make it more sweet. ~ Marty Rubin.
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.
So these were the 75 quotes on Nihilism.
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