Nihilist Quotes

Collection of famous quotes and sayings about Nihilist.

Quotes About Nihilist

Enjoy collection of 51 Nihilist quotes. Download and share images of famous quotes about Nihilist. Righ click to see and save pictures of Nihilist quotes that you can use as your wallpaper for free.

I think you would have to be a nihilist to say that we are not making progress on cancer, just like you'd have to be hubristically optimistic to say that we have conquered cancer. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee
Nihilist quotes by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps over the carpets of Aristippus. The cynic pullulated at every corner, and in the highest places. This cynic did nothing but saboter the civilisation of the time. He was the nihilist of Hellenism. He created nothing, he made nothing. His role was to undo - or rather to attempt to undo, for he did not succeed in his purpose. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyone, naturally and quite seriously, fulfils what the cynic farcically considers to be his personal role? ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset
Nihilist quotes by Jose Ortega Y Gasset
As a nihilist, I recognize that meaning does not exist. If we exterminate ourselves as a species, and vaporize our beautiful world, the universe will not cry with us (a condition called the pathetic fallacy). No gods will intervene. It will just happen and then - and then the universe will go on. We will not be remembered. We will simply not be. ~ Vjay Prozak
Nihilist quotes by Vjay Prozak
The man of the future who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also from that which was bound to grow out of it, the great nausea, the will to nothingness, nihilism; this bell stroke of noon and of the great decision that liberates the will again and restores its goal to the earth and his hope to man; this Antichrist and anti-nihilist; this victor over God and nothingness - he must come one day. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Nihilist quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche
In 1965, a psychologist named Martin Seligman started shocking dogs.
He was trying to expand on the research of Pavlov--the guy who could make dogs salivate when they heard a bell ring. Seligman wanted to head in the other direction, and when he rang his bell, instead of providing food, he zapped the dogs with electricity. To keep them still, he restrained them in a harness during the experiment. After they were conditioned, he put these dogs in a big box with a little fence dividing it into two halves. He figured if the dog rang the bell, it would hop over the fence to escape, but it didn't. It just sat there and braced itself. They decided to try shocking the dog after the bell. The dog still just sat there and took it. When they put a dog in the box that had never been shocked before or had previously been allowed to escape and tried to zap it--it jumped the fence.
You are just like these dogs.
If, over the course of your life, you have experienced crushing defeat or pummeling abuse or loss of control, you convince yourself over time that there is no escape, and if escape is offered, you will not act--you become a nihilist who trusts futility above optimism.
Studies of the clinically depressed show that they often give in to defeat and stop trying. . .
Any extended period of negative emotions can lead to you giving in to despair and accepting your fate. If you remain alone for a long time, you will decide loneliness is a fact of life and pass up op ~ David McRaney
Nihilist quotes by David McRaney
People always thought if no one believed in God and we were nihilists then people would go around murdering each other. That didn't happen at all, we just bought a lot of things with credit. ~ Noah Cicero
Nihilist quotes by Noah Cicero
I'm a kind person; I don't have a really nihilist streak in me, but I respond to that kind of humour. ~ Rachel Kushner
Nihilist quotes by Rachel Kushner
My interest in Sufism began when I was a college student. At the time, I was a rebellious young woman who liked to wrap several shawls of '-isms' around her shoulders: I was a leftist, feminist, nihilist, environmentalist, anarcho-pacifist…I wasn't interested in any religion and the difference between 'religiosity' and 'spirituality' was lost to me. Having spent some time of my childhood with a loving grandmother with many superstitions and beliefs, I had a sense the world was not composed of solely material things and there was more to life than I could see. But the truth is, I wasn't interested in understanding the world. I only wanted to change it. ~ Elif Shafak
Nihilist quotes by Elif Shafak
Man wants to reign supreme through the revolution. But why reign supreme if nothing has any
meaning? Why wish for immortality if the aspect of life is so hideous? There is no method of thought
which is absolutely nihilist except, perhaps, the method that leads to suicide, any more than there is
absolute materialism. ~ Albert Camus
Nihilist quotes by Albert Camus
Life," Garp wrote, "is sadly not structured like a good old-fashioned novel. Instead an end occurs when those who are meant to peter out have petered out. All that is left is memory. But even a nihilist has memory. ~ John Irving
Nihilist quotes by John Irving
The nihilist looks around at everything and comes to terms with what seems to be obvious. The sun is one tiny dying star in an enormous universe. One day the sun will burn out or explode, destroying us all. The earth is a molten rock that could either be blown up by nuclear weapons or an erratic comet. We are one of the seven billion nameless faceless ones currently living on this rock. What does our existence matter to this rock floating around a dying star within the expanse of an enormous universe?

Not much. ~ Jon Morrison
Nihilist quotes by Jon Morrison
With nihilism, no discussion is possible; for the nihilist logic doubts the existence of its interlocutor, and is not quite sure that it exists itself. ~ Victor Hugo
Nihilist quotes by Victor Hugo
Yes, I'm reckless and sometime express no concern for my own well being, and I express a misanthropic view of the world, but to have an opinion, you can't be a nihilist. ~ Marilyn Manson
Nihilist quotes by Marilyn Manson
Nihilists expend everything and everyone except themselves. They are the indispensable men, without whom the world might try to live almost happily. ~ Helen Clark MacInnes
Nihilist quotes by Helen Clark MacInnes
More profoundly, Nihilist "simplification" may be seen in the universal prestige today accorded the lowest order of knowledge, the scientific, as well as the simplistic ideas of men like Marx, Freud, and Darwin, which underlie virtually the whole of contemporary thought and life.

We say "life," for it is important to see that the Nihilist history of our century has not been something imposed from without or above, or at least has not been predominantly this; it has rather presupposed, and drawn its nourishment from, a Nihilist soil that has long been preparing in the hearts of the people. It is precisely from the Nihilism of the commonplace, from the everyday Nihilism revealed in the life and thought and aspiration of the people, that all the terrible events of our century have sprung.
The world-view of Hitler is very instructive in this regard, for in him the most extreme and monstrous Nihilism rested upon the foundation of a quite unexceptional and even typical Realism. He shared the common faith in "science," "progress," and "enlightenment" (though not, of course, in "democracy"), together with a practical materialism that scorned all theology, metaphysics, and any thought or action concerned with any other world than the "here and now," priding himself on the fact that he had "the gift of reducing all problems to their simplest foundations." He had a crude worship of efficiency and utility that freely tolerated "birth control", laughed at the institution ~ Seraphim Rose
Nihilist quotes by Seraphim Rose
I might be a nihilist except that I don't believe in anything. ~ Mitchell Heisman
Nihilist quotes by Mitchell Heisman
This horde of rubes strolled into Tokyo thinking it holds hope and possibility!! They totally believe they're gonna be respectable human beings!! But in mere months, all these scumbags will run dry of confidence and hope and become broken wrecks whining incessantly on twitter!! ~ Inio Asano
Nihilist quotes by Inio Asano
You have to have hope. It's irresponsible to give false hope, which I think a lot of playwrights are guilty of. But I also think it's irresponsible to simply be a nihilist, which quite a lot of playwrights, especially playwrights younger than me, have become guilty of. ~ Tony Kushner
Nihilist quotes by Tony Kushner
It is of course no secret to contemporary philosophers and psychologists that man himself is changing in our violent century, under the influence, of course, not only of war and revolution, but also of practically everything else that lays claim to being "modern" and "progressive." We have already cited the most striking forms of Nihilist Vitalism, whose cumulative effect has been to uproot, disintegrate, and "mobilize" the individual, to substitute for his normal stability and rootedness a senseless quest for power and movement, and to replace normal human feeling by a nervous excitability. The work of Nihilist Realism, in practice as in theory, has been parallel and complementary to that of Vitalism: a work of standardization, specialization, simplification, mechanization, dehumanization; its effect has been to "reduce" the individual to the most "Primitive" and basic level, to make him in fact the slave of his environment, the perfect workman in Lenin's worldwide "factory. ~ Seraphim Rose
Nihilist quotes by Seraphim Rose
Perhaps I can follow a heroic existential nihilist's sterling example of surviving the harshness of reality by employing an attentive narrative examination of my recalcitrant life to extract shards of personal truth and elicit a synthesizing purposefulness of my being from the darkness, anarchy, and chaos of existence. Perhaps through the act of engaging in a deliberative examination of the ontological mystery of being and investigating the accompanying stark brutal doubt that renders a materialistic life intolerably senseless, absurd, and meaningless, I can confront the baffle of being and establish a guiding set of personal values to live by in an indifferent world. Perhaps by using the contemplative tools of narrative storytelling, I can strictly scrutinize the key leaning rubrics veiled within an array of confusing personal life experiences. Perhaps by engaging in a creative act of discovery I can blunt the pain and anguish that comes from the nightmarish experience of suffering from an existential crisis. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster
Nihilist quotes by Kilroy J. Oldster
I am no nihilist. I am not even a cynic. I am, actually, rather romantic. And here's my idea of romance: You will soon be dead. Life will sometimes seem long and tough and, god, it's tiring. And you will sometimes be happy and sometimes sad. And then you'll be
old. And then you'll be dead. ~ Tim Minchin
Nihilist quotes by Tim Minchin
The born again nihilist has nothing to blame for their fall ~ Dean Cavanagh
Nihilist quotes by Dean Cavanagh
I am a terrorist and nihilist in theory as the others are with their weapons. Theoretical violence, not truth, is the only resource left us. ~ Jean Baudrillard
Nihilist quotes by Jean Baudrillard
Westerners think that all that is negative and positive is only caused from outside of themselves. They materialize and externalize their experiences, never understanding the connection between outer and inner phenomena or interdependent phenomena, looking for explanations only from objects through nihilist habit instead of from the subjective experience of their own minds. ~ Thinley Norbu
Nihilist quotes by Thinley Norbu
On Turgenev: He knew from Lavrov that I was an enthusiastic admirer of his writings; and one day, as we were returning in a carriage from a visit to Antokolsky's studio, he asked me what I thought of Bazarov. I frankly replied, 'Bazaraov is an admirable painting of the nihilist, but one feels that you did not love him as mush as you did your other heroes.'

'On the contrary, I loved him, intensely loved him,' Turgenev replied, with an unexpected vigor. 'When we get home I will show you my diary, in which I have noted how I wept when I had ended the novel with Bazarov's death.'

Turgenev certainly loved the intellectual aspect of Bazarov. He so identified himself with the nihilist philosophy of his hero that he even kept a diary in his name, appreciating the current events from Bazarov's point of view. But I think that he admired him more than he loved him. In a brilliant lecture on Hamlet and Don Quixote, he divided the history makers of mankind into two classes, represented by one or the other of these characters. 'Analysis first of all, and then egotism, and therefore no faith,--an egotist cannot even believe in himself:' so he characterized Hamlet. 'Therefore he is a skeptic, and never will achieve anything; while Don Quixote, who fights against windmills, and takes a barber's plate for the magic helmet of Mambrino (who of us has never made the same mistake?), is a leader of the masses, because the masses always follow those who, taking no heed of the s ~ Pyotr Kropotkin
Nihilist quotes by Pyotr Kropotkin
In his heart he was highly delighted with his friend's suggestion, but he thought it a duty to conceal his feeling. He was not a nihilist for nothing! ~ Ivan Turgenev
Nihilist quotes by Ivan Turgenev
The proudest, the most independent of women, if I can but succeed in communicating my passion to her, will follow me unreasoningly, unquestioningly, doing all I desire. Out of a nun I once made a nihilist who, I heard later, shot a policeman. In all my wanderings my wife never left me for an instant, and, like a weathercock, changed her faith with each of my changing passions.
- On the Way ~ Anton Chekhov
Nihilist quotes by Anton Chekhov
A nihilist is a man who doesn't acknowledge any authorities, who doesn't accept a single principle on faith, no matter how much that principle may be surrounded by respect. ~ Ivan Turgenev
Nihilist quotes by Ivan Turgenev
We cannot be too energetic in reminding our nihilists and positivists that this is a world of action and history. ~ Richard M. Weaver
Nihilist quotes by Richard M. Weaver
Tegularius was a willful, moody person who refused to fit into his society. Every so often he would display the liveliness of his intellect. When highly stimulated he could be entrancing; his mordant wit sparkled and he overwhelmed everyone with the audacity and richness of his sometimes somber inspirations. But basically he was incurable, for he did not want to be cured; he cared nothing for co-ordination and a place in the scheme of things. He loved nothing but his freedom, his perpetual student status, and preferred spending his whole life as the unpredictable and obstinate loner, the gifted fool and nihilist, to following the path of subordination to the hierarchy and thus attaining peace. He cared nothing for peace, had no regard for the hierarchy, hardly minded reproof and isolation. Certainly he was a most inconvenient and indigestible component in a community whose idea was harmony and orderliness. But because of this very troublesomeness and indigestibility he was, in the midst of such a limpid and prearranged little world, a constant source of vital unrest, a reproach, an admonition and warning, a spur to new, bold, forbidden, intrepid ideas, an unruly, stubborn sheep in the herd. ~ Hermann Hesse
Nihilist quotes by Hermann Hesse
Upon reflection, I realize that your image of me right now might be a bit skewed. Actually, kind of fucked. I am neither a nihilist, inordinately depressed, nor jaded. Though I can be and have been all of the above, and fully expect to be again. ~ Kergan Edwards-Stout
Nihilist quotes by Kergan Edwards-Stout
Art as the single superior counter-force against all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, anti-Nihilist par excellence. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Nihilist quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche
You want your agony to have a certain sophistication, no? You don't want people to think you're some simpleton who just suddenly realized life is hard, do you? Well, then, first you need to build a solid foundation, and that is what the following chapters are all about: bringing out the little turtlenecked French nihilist in you as a child. You need to cultivate your neuroses. Even if you only have one mental breakdown later in life, this early work will make it easier for you to "lose it" with gusto when the time is right. ~ Jacqueline Novak
Nihilist quotes by Jacqueline Novak
I am no ecological Pollyana. I have borne, and will continue to bear, feelings of wholehearted melancholy over the ecological state of the earth. How could I not? How could anyone not? But I am unwilling to become a hand-wringing nihilist, as some environmental 'realists' seem to believe is the more mature posture. Instead, I choose to dwell, as Emily Dickinson famously suggested, in possibility, where we cannot predict what will happen but we make space for it, whatever it is, and realize that our participation has value. This is grown-up optimism, where our bondedness with the rest of creation, a sense of profound interaction, and a belief in our shared ingenuity give meaning to our lives and actions on behalf of the more-than-human world. ~ Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Nihilist quotes by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Since every I is, in itself, fundamentally criminal in its attitude toward the State and the people, we must
recognize that to live is to transgress. Unless we accept death, we must be willing to kill in order to be
unique. "You are not as noble as a criminal, you who do not desecrate anything." Moreover Stirner, still
without the courage of his convictions, specifies: "Kill them, do not martyr them."
But to decree that murder is legitimate is to decree mobilization and war for all the Unique. Thus murder
will coincide with a kind of collective suicide. Stirner, who either does not admit or does not see this,
nevertheless does not recoil at the idea of any form of destruction. The spirit of rebellion finally discovers
one of its bitterest satisfactions in chaos. "You [the German nation] will be struck down. Soon your sister
nations will follow you; when all of them have gone your way, humanity will be buried, and on its tomb I,
sole master of myself at last, I, heir to all the human race, will shout with laughter." And so, among the
ruins of the world, the desolate laughter of the individual-king illustrates the last victory of the spirit of
rebellion. But at this extremity nothing else is possible but death or resurrection. Stirner, and with him all
the nihilist rebels, rush to the utmost limits, drunk with destruction. After which, when the desert has been
disclosed, the next step is to learn how to live there ~ Albert Camus
Nihilist quotes by Albert Camus
One of my teachers told me I was a nihilist. He meant it as an insult but I took it as a compliment. ~ Susanna Kaysen
Nihilist quotes by Susanna Kaysen
The young nihilists," Dad called us.
"What are nihilists?"
"Nihilists believe that nothing has any meaning. They believe in nothing."
"Yeah," said Earl. "I'm a nihilist.
"Me, too," I said.
"Good for you," Dad said, grinning. Then he stopped grinning and said, "Don't tell your mom. ~ Jesse Andrews
Nihilist quotes by Jesse Andrews
I don't see any point in nihilism ... just as I suppose the nihilist sees no point in everything else. ~ John Green
Nihilist quotes by John Green
Dying in our sleep won't solve anything in the long run, even if a nihilist would argue it's coming down the pike at some point anyway, so we might as well embrace it. ~ Ann Aguirre
Nihilist quotes by Ann Aguirre
My grandfather was a practising Quaker. My father was a nihilist. But nihilism, if you like, is the beginning of faith anyway. ~ Sebastian Horsley
Nihilist quotes by Sebastian Horsley
I am a socialist, a nihilist, a republican, anything that is anti-reactionary!... I want to turn everything upside down to see what lies beneath; I believe we are so webbed, so horribly regimented, that no spring-cleaning is possible, everything must be burned, blown to bits, and then we can start afresh... ~ August Strindberg
Nihilist quotes by August Strindberg
Not even the most hardened nihilist can live in the world of pure meaninglessness that his or her narrative presupposes. In their daily practice, the most ardent religious skeptics have to presuppose a basic order and intelligibility in reality that contradicts the creed of self-creation through random chance. ~ Michael S. Horton
Nihilist quotes by Michael S. Horton
Whereas a belief in an absurd world arises out of the fundamental disharmony of a person searching for meaning in an apparently meaninglessness universe, an existential nihilist displays impassive intellectual stoicism towards their eventual mortality while embracing a passionate artistic commitment to munity against the underlying syndrome of insignificance and confusion encasing life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster
Nihilist quotes by Kilroy J. Oldster
At the time, the question of woman's emancipation was of great interest to reformers. For the nihilist the issues were regarding work and sexual freedom. Because a woman's passport (which was used for general travel and not just travel abroad) was legally controlled by men - a father, or husband, had ultimate control of a woman's life. The nihilists solved this problem by having 'fictitious' marriages. This allowed for an emancipation of women de jure if not de facto. This resulted in women having the freedom of mobility to pursue some academic pursuits (which were curtailed during the White Terror) and some enterprise. Finally, the nihilists adopted the credo that adultery was a natural, and even desirable trait, in contrast to the spirit of their time, or their own cultural composition (i.e. they were prudes). ~ Anonymous
Nihilist quotes by Anonymous
I am superhero! I am the Nihilist! My superpowers include logical detachment, emotional invincibility, and the ability to blend in anywhere. I work alone and am never compromised by romantic entanglements, and I don't have a costume because who the fuck cares? ~ Lianne Oelke
Nihilist quotes by Lianne Oelke
Apart from a few explanations that are not the subject of this essay, the strange and terrifying growth of
the modern State can be considered as the logical conclusion of inordinate technical and philosophical
ambitions, foreign to the true spirit of rebellion, but which nevertheless gave birth to the revolutionary
spirit of our time. The prophetic dream of Marx and the over-inspired predictions of Hegel or of
Nietzsche ended by conjuring up, after the city of God had been razed to the ground, a rational or
irrational State, which in both cases, however, was founded on terror.
In actual fact, the Fascist revolutions of the twentieth century do not merit the title of revolution. They
lacked the ambition of universality. Mussolini and Hitler, of course, tried to build an empire, and the
National Socialist ideologists were bent, explicitly, on world domination. But the difference between
them and the classic revolutionary movement is that, of the nihilist inheritance, they chose to deify the
irrational, and the irrational alone, instead
of deifying reason. In this way they renounced their claim to universality. And yet Mussolini makes
use of Hegel, and Hitler of Nietzsche; and both illustrate, historically, some of the prophecies of German
ideology. In this respect they belong to the history of rebellion and of nihilism. They were the first to
construct a State on the concept that everything is meaningless and ~ Albert Camus
Nihilist quotes by Albert Camus
I'm very proud that some people think that I'm a danger for the intellectual health of students. When people start thinking of health in intellectual activities, I think there is something wrong. In their opinion I am a dangerous man, since I am a crypto-Marxist, an irrationalist, a nihilist. ~ Michel Foucault
Nihilist quotes by Michel Foucault
If I didn't work in television or film, if I didn't have the right look, I never took it personally. Because there was always the theatre. I'm not a nihilist, I'm an optimist. And that has served me well in this profession. ~ Kim Cattrall
Nihilist quotes by Kim Cattrall
Subvert the social and civil order! Aye, I would destroy, to the last vestige, this mockery of order, this travesty upon justice! Break up the home? Yes, every home that rests on slavery! Every marriage that represents the sale and transfer of the individuality of one of its parties to the other! Every institution, social or civil, that stands between man and his right; every tie that renders one a master, another a serf; every law, every statute, every be-it-enacted that represents tyranny; everything you call American privilege that can only exist at the expense of international right.
Now cry out, "Nihilist-disintegrationist !"
Say that I would isolate humanity, reduce society to its elemental state, make men savage! It is not true. But rather than see this devastating, cankering, enslaving system you call social order go on, rather than help to keep alive the accursed institutions of Authority, I would help to reduce every fabric in the social structure to its native element. ~ Voltairine De Cleyre
Nihilist quotes by Voltairine De Cleyre
I never feel weird about being the main character in the nontransferable, nonexistent movie of my life. That's totally fine. What makes me nervous is a growing suspicion that this movie is fucked up and devoid of meaning. The auteur is a nihilist. ~ Chuck Klosterman
Nihilist quotes by Chuck Klosterman
Faith? Haven't any. I'm not a nihilist or a relativist. I don't believe in anything but change. I'm a Heraclitean - you can't step in the same river twice. ~ Philip Johnson
Nihilist quotes by Philip Johnson
Hmmm Quotes «
» Probity Quotes