Nihilism Quotes - Page 3

• The Stars are setting and the Caravan Starts for the Dawn of Nothing-Oh, make haste!

  Omar Khayyam

  Stars, Dawn, Haste

  Omar Khayyam, Edward FitzGerald, Christopher Decker (1997). “Edward FitzGerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: A Critical Edition”, p.167, University of Virginia Press

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• The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism.

  Irving Kristol

  Enemy, Today, Socialism

  Irving Kristol (1995). “Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea”, p.101, Simon and Schuster

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• Hitting bottom isn't a weekend retreat, it's not a goddamn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and just let go!

  Brad Pitt

  Letting Go, Weekend, Trying

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• That is the most extreme form of nihilism: nothingness (the "meaningless") eternally!

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Form, Extremes, Meaningless

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• The saying "no self, no problem" probably comes from Zen. In their cultures, where Buddhism is kind of taken for granted, as well as karma, causality, former and future life, and the possibility for becoming enlightened, then it's safe to skirt the danger of nihilism, which would be, I don't exist because Buddha said I have no self, and therefore I have no problem because I don't exist. That would be a bad misunderstanding. But in those cultures, it would not be as easy to have that understanding as it would be here in the west, where we really are nihilistic.

  Robert Thurman

  Karma, Taken, Buddhism

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

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• Philosophy would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. It should strive to be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity.

  Ray Brassier

  Self Esteem, Philosophy, Opportunity

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• I think there is an element of nihilism about, but I don't think most artists feel their work is meaningless.

  Leonard Baskin

  Artist, Thinking, Elements

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• Inexpedient: Not calculated to advance one's interests.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Interest

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.105, 谷月社

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• Most of us will still take nihilism over neanderthalism.

  David Foster Wallace

  Stills

  David Foster Wallace (2012). “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again”, p.56, Hachette UK

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• [R]eligious concepts are parasitic upon moral intuitions.

  Pascal Boyer

  Intuition, Moral, Concepts

  Pascal Boyer (2001). “Religion Explained: The Human Instincts that Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors”, Random House (UK)

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• 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 Critchley

  Mean, Affirmation, Moments

  "Nihilism, punk and the international necronautical society: an interview with simon critchley". Interview with Steven Fowler, www.3ammagazine.com. March 30, 2009.

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• 

  Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing.

  Victor Hugo

  Zero, Philosophy, Doe

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• Tragedy is a vision of nihilism, a heroic or ennobling vision of nihilism.

  Susan Sontag

  Vision, Tragedy, Heroic

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• Regimes collapse when people are no longer afraid and think they're no longer alone.

  Gordon G. Chang

  Thinking, People, Regimes

  Gordon G. Chang (2001). “The coming collapse of China”, Random House Business Books

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• 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

  Dark, Sides, Notion

  Robert Jensen (2004). “Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity”, p.39, City Lights Books

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• Science investigates, religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power, religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts, religion deals with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Fall, Men, Two

  "Strength to Love". Book by Martin Luther King, Jr. Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart, 1963.

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• What every artist should try to prevent is the car, in which is our civilized life, plunging over the side of the precipice -- the exhibitionist extremist promoter driving the whole bag of tricks into a nihilistic nothingness or zero.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Zero, Artist, Car

  Wyndham Lewis (1989). “The Essential Wyndham Lewis: An Introduction to His Work”, Andre Deutsch Limited

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• You don't realize all the things you have in this world, much more than you need, and you do much less than you can.

  Roberto Canessa

  Needs, World, Realizing

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• Immoral: Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral. If mans notions of right and wrong have any other basis than this of expediency; if they originated, or could have originated, in any other way; if actions have in themselves a moral character apart from and nowise dependent on, their consequences-then all philosophy is a lie and reason a disorder of the mind.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Running, Lying, Philosophy

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.98, 谷月社

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• 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

  Mean, Men, Depth

  "The Closing of the American Mind". Book by Allan Bloom, pp. 157-158, 1987.

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• Peter had a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Creative, Genius, True Genius

  "The Social Contract & Discourses".

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• Christian theology is a hair's breadth away from nihilism.

  John Milbank

  Christian, Hair, Theology

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• The Only cure for nihilism is for liberal democratic societies - their electorates, their judiciary, and their political leadership- to insist that force is legitimate only to the degree that it serves defensible poltical goals. Thus implies a constant exercise of due diligence.

  Michael Ignatieff

  Exercise, Goal, Political

  "The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror". Book by Michael Ignatieff, April 2004.

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• There must be somebody there, because somebody must have said "Nobody.

  A. A. Milne

  Said

  A. A. Milne (2012). “Winnie-the-Pooh”, p.24, Egmont UK

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• Suicide attacks are the actions of losers who have nothing left to lose. In this case, Islam serves as a mask, a cover for desperation and nihilism, but not for religion.

  Walter Kasper

  Suicide, Islam, Action

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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