Nihilism Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old nihilism quotes, nihilism sayings, and nihilism proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

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
The moral nihilism of celebrity culture is played out on reality television shows, most of which encourage a dark voyeurism into other people's humiliation, pain, weakness, and betrayal. Chris Hedges
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
The drive toward nihilism is invidious, and it adds a substantial layer of risk to the financial world and markets.'— 'More Mania in the Markets.' Zachary Karabell
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
Imagine him, further, without faith— a nihilist mystic— and we have the disastrous consummation of the earthly venture. E.M. Cioran
Alongside intellectual disgust develops another, deeper and more dangerous: emanating from the viscera, it ends at the severest form of nihilism, the nihilism of repletion. E.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. Carol A. Dingle
Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Carol A. Dingle
Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate. Carol A. Dingle
There are few things easier than to live badly and to die well. Oscar Wilde
He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram to his tombstone. Oscar Wilde
Nihilism is the righteous and honorable resistance of a people crushed under an iron rule. Wendell Phillips
Nihilism is evidence of life...the last weapons of victims choked and manacled beyond all other resistance. Wendell Phillips
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
We are wrong to think of nihilism as bad or as negative or as in any way motivating bad or negative actions. James Tartaglia
The nihilist is one who consciously experiences the tension between her need for meaning, order, or sense and her recognition that her world is absurd or meaningless. Van Tongeren
A nihilist is one who feels compelled to seek out the truth even when she recognizes it does not exist; she feels driven to find a meaning and purpose for existence even when she believes there is no such meaning to be found. Nietzsche
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
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? Blaise Cendrars
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
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
The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism. Irving Kristol
That is the most extreme form of nihilism: nothingness (the "meaningless") eternally! Friedrich Nietzsche
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
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
Christian theology is a hair's breadth away from nihilism. John Milbank
Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. Victor Hugo
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
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're heading. Irvine Welsh