Nihilism Quotes - Page 4

• 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

  Mean, Doe, Answers

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• 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

  Sides, Creeds, Currents

  Hannah Arendt (1981). “The Life of the Mind”, p.192, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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.

  Unknown

  People, World, Fringe

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

  Cynthia Daignault

  Significance

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Meaning is malleable: take it out, you get nihilism and despair. Put it in, you get sacredness and something most special.

  Dean Ornish

  Special, Despair, Sacredness

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• Nihilism is.not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one shoulder to the plough; one destroys.

  Unknown

  Belief, Deserve

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• Nihilism, there's really nothing to it.

  Dean Cavanagh

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• 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

  Religious, Thinking, Law

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• The laws of history tell us that only when the old is gone can the new take its place.

  Wei Jingsheng

  Law, Gone

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• ...What is at stake is civilization and humanity, nothing less. The idea that everything is permitted, as Nietzsche put it, rests on the premise of nihilism and has nihilistic implications. I will not pretend that the case against nihilism and for civilization is an easy one to make. We are here confronting the most fundamental of philosophical questions, on the deepest levels. In short, the matter of pornography and obscenity is not a trivial one, and only superficial minds can take a bland and untroubled view of it.

  Irving Kristol

  Philosophical, Views, Civilization

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• Meanings generating meanings - the process has backed us into a particular corner, a kind of cave, where sunlight seldom enters.

  Tarthang Tulku

  Caves, Kind, Sunlight

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• 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.

  Gore Vidal

  Christian, Pain, Hate

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• Liberal capitalism is not at all the Good of humanity. Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism.

  Alain Badiou

  Humanity, Savages, Fierce

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• I like the idea of being sort of withdrawn and mysterious, and what can be more mysterious that someone wearing a trash bag, like a dark trash bag, with eye holes that say "nihilism?" You'd be curious. What's underneath that? Is it perfect? Or is it broken?

  Eugene Mirman

  Eye, Dark, Ideas

  "Eugene Mirman picks the hottest Halloween costumes, from naughty rabbi to mayonnaise". Interview with Marah Eakin, www.avclub.com. October 20, 2015.

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• 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

  Religious, Struggle, Foundation

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Nietzsche saw that ultimately the problem of nihilism is the problem of what to do with time: Why keep investing in the future when there is no longer any transcendental guarantor, a positive end of time as ultimate reconciliation or redemption, ensuring a pay-off for this investment? Nietzsche's solution - his attempted overcoming of nihilism - consists in affirming the senselessness of becoming as such - all becoming, without reservation or discrimination.

  Ray Brassier

  Redemption, Overcoming, Discrimination

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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

  Today, Terrorism, Globalization

  "The spirit of terrorism" by Jean Baudrillard, ("The Violence of the Global"), 2003.

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• Philosophy isn't programmed into us, and a lot of the forces of our culture steadfastly work against it. Philosophy, for me, is a way of resisting the nihilism of the present by making, creating, affirming. By going on.

  Simon Critchley

  Philosophy, Creating, Culture

  Simon Critchley, Carl Cederström, Todd Kesselman (2011). “Impossible Objects”, p.46, Polity

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• 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

  Simple, Atoms, Bombs

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• 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?

  David E. Cooper

  Exercise, Doctrine, World

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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

  Civilization, Mastery, Culture

  FaceBook post by Dr. Cornel West from Jun 20, 2012

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

  Torbjorn Tannsjo

  Thinking, Moral, Argument

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The struggle against subjectivism was the attempt to avoid the charge of what was then called "idealism" or "nihilism", i.e., that we know nothing more than our own representations.

  Frederick C. Beiser

  Struggle, Subjectivism, Idealism

  "Diotima’s child". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. September 21, 2012.

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• In face of this modern nihilism, Christians are often lacking in courage. We tend to give the impression that we will hold on to the outward forms whatever happens, even if God really is not there. But the opposite ought to be true of us, so that people can see that we demand the truth of what is there and that we are not dealing merely with platitudes. In other words, it should be understood that we take this question of truth and personality so seriously that if God were not there we would be among the first of those who had the courage to step out of the queue.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Christian, Opposites, People

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• 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.

  Maria Montessori

  Mean, Psychology, Wish

  Maria Montessori (2012). “The Montessori Method”, p.29, Courier Corporation

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