Nihilism Quotes

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

There must be somebody there, because somebody must have said "Nobody.

[R]eligious concepts are parasitic upon moral intuitions.

Most of us will still take nihilism over neanderthalism.

The philosophy that prepares a revolution and the sentiment that underpins the philosophy have, in every case the two pillars of nihilism and mysticism.

Those who believe in nothing are very, very jealous and angry at those who believe in something.

We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.

All human victories, all human progress, stand upon the inner force.

I think all true stories are hopeful stories. I don't think there's any room for nihilism.

Hitting bottom isn't a weekend retreat, it's not a goddamn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and just let go!

Habit: A shackle for the free.

The Universe will now be set right. Made over to fit my unique view of what should be. Let Nihilism reign supreme!

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

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

The precise moment at which a great belief is doomed is easily recognisable; it is the moment when its value begins to be called in question.

Destroy or be destroyed-there is no middle way! Let us then be the destroyers!

Immoral: Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral. If mans notions of right and wrong have any other basis than this of expediency; if they originated, or could have originated, in any other way; if actions have in themselves a moral character apart from and nowise dependent on, their consequences-then all philosophy is a lie and reason a disorder of the mind.

... 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.

The Sexual Revolution is a complete rebellion against authority, natural and supernatural, even against the body and its needs, its natural functions of child bearing. This is not reverence for life, it is a great denial and more resembles Nihilism than the revolution that they think they are furthering.

The powerful feed ideology to the masses like fast food while they dine on that most rarefied delicacy: impunity.

Are there any good arguments in defence of moral nihilism? I think not.

Nihilism in American comedy came along way before 'The Simpsons.' There was a fairly nihilistic point of view to 'Saturday Night Live,' for instance, back in the beginning, and a lot of really dark comedy had a really anti-sentimental take on life.

Scientists are skeptics. It's unfortunate that the word 'skeptic' has taken on other connotations in the culture involving nihilism and cynicism. Really, in its pure and original meaning, it's just thoughtful inquiry.

Cynicism was a school in Greece - the Cynics. Diogenes is a famous Cynic. There was a strong belief in nihilism and narcissism. Those are old schools too.

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.

Which other major religion is based on the Godhead incarnate being whipped, tacked to a cross, stabbed? Only the Marquis de Sade could have made up a sicker religion. It's no wonder that those brought up in such a culture hate life and enjoy inflicting pain. All societies are sick but some are sicker than others. Christian societies are certainly the sickest.

He who experiments must, while doing so, divest himself of every preconception. It is clear then that if we wish to make use of a method of experimental psychology, the first thing necessary is to renounce all former creeds and to proceed by means of the method in the search for truth.

what are you looking for? There is no Truth. There's only action, action obeying a million different impulses, ephemeral action, action subjected to every possible and imaginable contingency and contradiction, Life. Life is crime, theft, jealousy, hunger, lies, disgust,stupidity, sickness, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, piles of corpses. what can you do about it, my poor friend?

Religion itself cannot but be dynamic which is why "return" is an incorrect term. A return to the forms of religion which perhaps existed a couple of centuries ago is absolutely impossible. On the contrary, in order to combat modern materialistic mores, as religion must, to fight nihilism and egotism, religion must also develop, must be flexible in its forms, and it must have a correlation with the cultural forms of the epoch.

The atheism and nihilism of my earlier years now seems shallow, and even a bit cocky.

Perhaps - and this goes for the Kyoto School too - one of these insights is that nothingness and unknowing don't have to be equated with a destructive nihilism but with the experience of unity and participation - whilst resisting the tendency of objectifying metaphysics to claim that we can in some way 'know' that this experienced unity is really the truth of how things are, i.e., reveals being itself.

The deflation, or flattening out, of values in Modern art does not necessarily indicate an ethical nihilism. Quite the contrary; in opening our eyes to the rejected elements of existence, art may lead us to a more complete and less artificial celebration of the world.

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.

She soon learned, though, that giving weight to other people's opinions was creative nihilism; it was like being banished from the Land of No Words and exiled to the Land of All Bullshit.

If you live today, you breath 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 stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.

Your drive to produce hard-edged opinions stoked by hostility is likely a sign that you've been brainwashed by the pedestrian influences of pop nihilism.

Fact is, the desperate desire to be cool has skewed our culture toward nihilism, carelessness, and ineptitude. It is now cool to be an idiot. A jackass. It's cool to be a failure, as long as your failure is the basis for a reality show.

The saying "no self, no problem" probably comes from Zen. In their cultures, where Buddhism is kind of taken for granted, as well as karma, causality, former and future life, and the possibility for becoming enlightened, then it's safe to skirt the danger of nihilism, which would be, I don't exist because Buddha said I have no self, and therefore I have no problem because I don't exist. That would be a bad misunderstanding. But in those cultures, it would not be as easy to have that understanding as it would be here in the west, where we really are nihilistic.

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

I rather shared Nietzsche's conception of the kind of individual that an ideal education should be cultivating. 'Authenticity' is not Nietzsche's term, but as used by some existentialists, it nicely captures what Nietzsche admired - the resolve of an individual person to forge his or her own 'table of values', to be emancipated from strait-jacketing conventions, traditions, and ideologies. As embodied in the 'Overman', authenticity is the antidote to 'bad' nihilism.

In the doctrine of the world and humankind as 'will to power and nothing else', Heidegger identified not an antidote to nihilism, but the completion of it. For what can be more destructive of truth and value than the doctrine that these are simply the impositions on the world of human exercises of power?

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

It is of note that for a long time moral nihilism was a kind of unquestioned default position in analytic moral philosophy.

I'm not sure if Cupitt himself still uses this term, but it's useful in suggesting that, actually, there are more choices than the choice between nihilism and faith. In fact, the issue may not be faith as such but the fact that for millennia, Christianity has buttressed itself with a particular kind of metaphysics that has now seemingly reached the end of its life-span. But perhaps Buddhist metaphysics could provide an alternative here - or, at least, offer a direction of travel.

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.

When I was in college, I remember fearing that the dreary grind of adulthood would feature infinitely more existential dread than frat parties had, but the opposite has been true for me. I'm much less likely to feel that gnawing fear of aimlessness and nihilism than I used to be and that's partly because education gave me job opportunities, but it's mostly because education gave me perspective and context.

When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock. To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged. Any claim that the mind has an innate organization strikes people not as a hypothesis that might be incorrect but as a thought it is immoral to think.

I am against nationalism, and I am against patriotism. They are both the dark side. It is time not simply to redefine a kinder-and-gentler patriotism, but to sweep away the notion and acknowledge it as morally, politically, and intellectually bankrupt. It is time to scrap patriotism.

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.

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.