Nihilism is a belief that all political and religious organizations are bad, or a system of thought that says that there are no principles or beliefs that have any meaning or can be true. Profoundly inspirational nihilism quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.
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Famous Nihilism Quotes
I think all true stories are hopeful stories. I don’t think there’s any room for nihilism. — John Green
I find it hard to take nihilism seriously; even nihilists don’t believe in it. — Colin Gorman
The point is there ain’t no point. — Cormac McCarthy
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
All good things were formerly bad things; every original sin has turned into an original virtue. — Friedrich Nietzsche
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
I don’t see any point in nihilism…just as I suppose the nihilist sees no point in everything else. — John Green
That is the most extreme form of nihilism: nothingness eternally! — Friedrich Nietzsche
Most of us will still take nihilism over neanderthalism. — David Foster Wallace
The Stars are setting and the Caravan Starts for the Dawn of Nothing-Oh, make haste! — Omar Khayyam
Suffering is a byproduct of evolution by natural selection, an inevitable consequence that may worry us in our more sympathetic moments but cannot be expected to worry a tiger – even if a tiger can be said to worry about anything at all – and certainly cannot be expected to worry its genes. — Richard Dawkins
Nearly half of the American population is eagerly anticipating the end of the world. This dewy-eyed nihilism provides absolutely no incentive to build a sustainable civilization. Many of these people are lunatics, but they are not the lunatic fringe. — Sam Harris
Meaning is malleable: take it out, you get nihilism and despair. Put it in, you get sacredness and something most special. — Dean Ornish
Everything in the world displeases me: but, above all, my displeasure in everything displeases me. — Friedrich Nietzsche
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
There is no one as dangerous as he or she who has nothing to lose. — Rebecca Solnit
The negative always wins at last, but I like it none the better for that. — Mason Cooley
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
Religion itself cannot but be dynamic. In order to combat modern materialistic mores, 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. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate. — Albert Camus
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. — Flannery O’Connor
The attack against dogmas as such, therefore, strongly resembles the struggle against the general legal foundations of a state, and , as the latter would end in a total anarchy of the state, the former would end in a worthless religious nihilism. — Adolf Hitler
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
Inexpedient: Not calculated to advance one’s interests. — Ambrose Bierce
There must be somebody there, because somebody must have said Nobody. — A. A. Milne
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. — Michael Shermer
Destroy or be destroyed-there is no middle way! Let us then be the destroyers! — Mikhail Bakunin
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 best done by professionals. — Iggy Pop
The contemporary rejection of natural right leads to nihilism — nay, it is identical with nihilism, — Leo Strauss
Continental thinkers have been obsessed with bourgeois man as representing the worst and most contemptible failure of modernity, which must at all costs be overcome. Nihilism in its most palpable sense means that the bourgeois has won, that the future, all foreseeable futures, belong to him, that all heights above him and all depths beneath him are illusory and that life is not worth living on these terms. — Allan Bloom
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
I believe that we are all, openly or secretly, struggling against one or another kind of nihilism. — Ellen Willis
Tragedy is a vision of nihilism, a heroic or ennobling vision of nihilism. — Susan Sontag
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. — Robert Jensen
We must overthrow the material and moral conditions of our present-day life. We must first purify our atmosphere and completely transform the milieu in which we live; for it corrupts our instinct and our will, and constricts our heart and our intelligence — Mikhail Bakunin
The powerful feed ideology to the masses like fast food while they dine on that most rarefied delicacy: impunity. — Naomi Klein
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
True genius is creative and makes all from nothing. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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. — Greg Gutfeld
One cannot be a part-time nihilist. — Albert Camus
All human victories, all human progress, stand upon the inner force. — Maria Montessori
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. — Oliver Stone
He was simply someone who floated through our lives and didn’t seem to care how flatly he perceived everyone or that he’d shared our secret failures with the world, showcasing the youthful indifference, the gleaming nihilism, glamorizing the horror of it all. — Bret Easton Ellis
Since there is no wrong or right, you just reap what you sow. — Peter Murphy
The middle way is a view of life that avoids the extreme of misguided grasping born of believing there is something we can find, or buy, or cling to that will not change. And it avoids the despair and nihilism born from the mistaken belief that nothing matters, that all is meaningless. — Sharon Salzberg
Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. — Victor Hugo
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.
The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Science, Nietzsche had warned, is becoming a factory, and the result will be ethical nihilism. — Rollo May
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 weird nihilism that permeates Mellon Collie is extremely relevant to what’s going on right now. So many kids are intelligent and articulate, but they don’t know what to do with themselves. — Billy Corgan
I think there is an element of nihilism about, but I don’t think most artists feel their work is meaningless. — Leonard Baskin
If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him. — Mikhail Bakunin
If you want to scare people, you talk about evil. — Noam Chomsky
Courage is impulsive; it is narcissism tempered with nihilism. — Ayelet Waldman
Those who believe in nothing are very, very jealous and angry at those who believe in something. — Dennis Prager
the problem is not suffering itself or oblivion itself but the depraved meaninglessness of these things, the absolutely inhuman nihilism of suffering. — John Green
Say what you want about the deaf… — Jimmy Carr
Liberal capitalism is not at all the Good of humanity. Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism. — Alain Badiou
I think I had a job in a children’s theatre. I taught badly because I was into nihilism at the time and that’s just not where you go with teaching. — Beth Henley
Hitting bottom isn’t a weekend retreat, it’s not a goddamn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and just let go! — Brad Pitt
A great deal of time and intellectual force are lost in the world, because the false seems great and the truth so small and insignificant. — Maria Montessori
The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism. — Irving Kristol
Habit: A shackle for the free. — Ambrose Bierce
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. — Dorothy Day
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
