Nihilist Quotes

• I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind -- and that of the minds who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.

  William Faulkner

  Moving, Reality, Bereavement

  William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill, John Steinbeck (1971). “William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill [and] John Steinbeck”

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• You are putting yourself in serious danger...' I think that I preferred to put myself in serious danger rather than confront my shame. My shame at not having become someone, the shame of not having made my parents proud after all the sacrifices they had made for me. The shame of having become a mediocre nihilist.

  Marjane Satrapi

  Sacrifice, Thinking, Parent

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• 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

  Atheist, Men, Goal

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.532, Modern Library

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• A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing , but one who does not believe in what exists.

  Albert Camus

  Believe, Nihilism, Doe

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.69, Vintage

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• Ultimately, because I'm an artist, I can't ever consider myself a nihilist, so I suppose I'm optimistic.

  Marilyn Manson

  Optimistic, Artist, I Can

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• The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Turgenev, and completed by Dostoevsky. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People's Palace rose out debris of a novel. Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose.

  Oscar Wilde

  Believe, People, Rose

  Oscar Wilde (1999). “De Profundis: The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Writings”, p.159, Wordsworth Editions

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• 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

  Men, Thinking, People

  Michel Foucault (1988). “Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault”, Univ of Massachusetts Press

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• Sometimes I think I'm a nihilist because it doesn't matter, none of this matters. We're all following the will of some unknowable higher power, probably the stars manipulating our cellular magnets. We think we have all this agency, but do we? Do we really? Can you choose to be brave when you were born a coward? Can we be deprogrammed from the brainwashing that we grew up in? I think we can, but I think we need a lot of help.

  Ottessa Moshfegh

  Thinking, Brave, Coward

  Source: logger.believermag.com

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• One cannot be a part-time nihilist.

  Albert Camus

  Nihilism, Part Time

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• 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

  Thinking, Understanding, Mind

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• 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

  Views, World, Opinion

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• We cannot be too energetic in reminding our nihilists and positivists that this is a world of action and history.

  Richard M. Weaver

  World, Action, Energetic

  Letter to R. T. Eubanks (January 19, 1961) in "Language is Sermonic", p. 56, 1970.

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• The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they've suddenly become nihilists.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Facts, Dunces

  Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Richard Freeborn (1998). “Fathers and Sons”, p.54, Oxford University Press, USA

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• I don't see any point in nihilism... just as I suppose the nihilist sees no point in everything else.

  John Green

  Nihilism, No Point

  Interview with Jade Chang, www.goodreads.com. December, 2012.

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• To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Opposition

  Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.12, Basic Books

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• I was raised a Christian, but I wouldn't call myself a Christian now. I think when I was younger it was easier to focus on the negative, nihilist vision... this is sort of picking up on the other half of the body, which is God and white light.

  Billy Corgan

  Christian, Thinking, Light

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• The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons. ... Republicans: The No. 1 reason the rest of the world thinks we're deaf, dumb, and dangerous.

  Garrison Keillor

  Christian, Party, Golf

  "We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore", These Times, August 26, 2004.

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• Works of art produced in the contemporary world are a further expression of that. But I don't think there is an active, ongoing nihilist self-consciousness in the artist.

  Leonard Baskin

  Art, Thinking, Self

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• I also eschew the identity of "puppeteer" it is a concept that blurs the boundaries of discrete objects and persons. I do think Anarchist Nihilist Puppet Show is my day job.

  Kalan Sherrard

  Thinking, Identity, Anarchist

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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

  Men, Trying, World

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• 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

  Believe, Rivers, Steps

  "Philip Johnson: What I've Learned". Interview with John H. Richardson, www.esquire.com. February 1999.

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• My grandfather was a practising Quaker. My father was a nihilist. But nihilism, if you like, is the beginning of faith anyway.

  Unknown

  Father, Nihilism, Quaker

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• The Overman will himself be a nihilist in the (good) sense of rejecting any metaphysical or religious grounding for truth and value, but instead of curling up in despair, or simply going along with the crowd like the 'passive' nihilist, he will recognize himself as the sole source of truths and values to live by.

  David E. Cooper

  Religious, Despair, Crowds

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist. And there is no decent or charted way of making a living at it. It is something you are, and not something you do.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Way, Decent, Opposition

  Christopher Hitchens (2001). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• 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

  Memories, Ends, Peter

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