Nihilism Quotes - Page 6

• When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock. To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged. Any claim that the mind has an innate organization strikes people not as a hypothesis that might be incorrect but as a thought it is immoral to think.

  Steven Pinker

  Children, War, Thinking

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.14, Penguin

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• We should not accept moral nihilism unless we find strong arguments to do so.

  Torbjorn Tannsjo

  Strong, Moral, Argument

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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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

  Nihilist, No Point

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

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• I think all true stories are hopeful stories. I don't think there's any room for nihilism.

  John Green

  Thinking, Hopeful, Rooms

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

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• When I was in college, I remember fearing that the dreary grind of adulthood would feature infinitely more existential dread than frat parties had, but the opposite has been true for me. I'm much less likely to feel that gnawing fear of aimlessness and nihilism than I used to be and that's partly because education gave me job opportunities, but it's mostly because education gave me perspective and context.

  John Green

  Education, Jobs, Party

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• The Universe will now be set right. Made over to fit my unique view of what should be. Let Nihilism reign supreme!

  Jim Starlin

  Unique, Views, Reign

  "The Infinity Gauntlet". Comic book, Issue 2 : From Bad to Worse, 1991.

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• Religion itself cannot but be dynamic which is why "return" is an incorrect term. A return to the forms of religion which perhaps existed a couple of centuries ago is absolutely impossible. On the contrary, in order to combat modern materialistic mores, as religion must, 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

  Fighting, Order, Materialistic

  Interview with Joseph Pearce, Sr., "St. Austin Review", Volume 2, No. 2, www.catholiceducation.org. February 2003.

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• 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

  Strong, School, Belief

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• That is why I have called feminism nihilism. It says that being a woman is nothing definite and that the duty of women is to advance that nothingness as a cause.

  Harvey Mansfield

  Feminism, Causes, Being A Woman

  Harvey Claflin Mansfield (2007). “Manliness”, p.147, Yale University Press

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• Moral nihilism comes with a price we can now see.

  Torbjorn Tannsjo

  Moral

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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

  Reality, Long, Desire

  Greg Gutfeld (2014). “Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You”, p.24, Crown Forum

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• I think that today, integration is the name of the game and not separating these things out, and not trying to find the razor's edge, the narrow path. There's a lot of lanes in the highway, the trick is not fall into the ditches on either side, like a one sided nihilism, nothing matters life.

  Surya Das

  Fall, Thinking, Games

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

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• ... the twin concepts of nihilism and the antihero have had it. What began with The Wild One and James "nobody understands me" Dean, ran with increasing vehement negativism up through the Stones and Velvets and Iggy ... [I]t may be time, in spite of all indications to the contrary from the exterior society, to begin thinking in terms of heroes again, of love instead of hate, of energy instead of violence, of strength instead of cruelty, of action instead of reaction.

  Lester Bangs

  Hate, Hero, Thinking

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• The great German idealists from Kant to Hegel saw this idealism or nihilism as a reductio ad absurdum of any philosophy, and so they struggled by all conceptual means to avoid it.

  Frederick C. Beiser

  Philosophy, Mean, Saws

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

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• For a politics of emancipation, the enemy that is to be feared most is not repression at the hands of the established order. It is the interiority of nihilism, and the unbounded cruelty that can come with its emptiness.

  Alain Badiou

  Hands, Order, Enemy

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• Break, beat up everything, beat and destroy! Everything that's being broken is rubbish and has no right to life! What survives is good

  Dmitry Pisarev

  Broken, Rubbish, Break

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• The Nazis, for him, are merely available movie tropes--articulate monsters with a talent for sadism. By making the Americans cruel, too, he escapes the customary division of good and evil along national lines, but he escapes any sense of moral accountability as well. In a Tarantino war, everyone commits atrocities. Like all the director's work after 'Jackie Brown,' the movie is pure sensation. It's disconnected from feeling, and an eerie blankness--it's too shallow to be called nihilism--undermines even the best scenes.

  David Denby

  War, Eerie, Evil

  David Denby (2013). “Do the Movies Have a Future?”, p.252, Simon and Schuster

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• I am interested in a political art, that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures and uncertain ending - an art (and a politics) in which optimism is kept in check, and nihilism at bay.

  William Kentridge

  Art, Optimism, Political

  Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, William Kentridge (1998). “William Kentridge”, Societe Des Expositions Des Beaux

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• The atheism and nihilism of my earlier years now seems shallow, and even a bit cocky.

  Anne Rice

  Atheist, Cocky, Years

  Anne Rice (1997). “Memnoch the Devil”, Random House Digital, Inc.

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• Nihilism in American comedy came along way before 'The Simpsons.' There was a fairly nihilistic point of view to 'Saturday Night Live,' for instance, back in the beginning, and a lot of really dark comedy had a really anti-sentimental take on life.

  Matt Groening

  Dark, Night, Views

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• The contemporary rejection of natural right leads to nihilism - nay, it is identical with nihilism.

  Leo Strauss

  Rejection, Natural, Contemporary

  Leo Strauss (1953). “Natural Right and History”, p.5, University of Chicago Press

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• The precise moment at which a great belief is doomed is easily recognisable; it is the moment when its value begins to be called in question.

  Gustave Le Bon

  Belief, Moments, Doomed

  "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind".

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• 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

  Secret, World, Care

  Bret Easton Ellis (2010). “Imperial Bedrooms”, p.3, Pan Macmillan

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• I'm not sure if Cupitt himself still uses this term, but it's useful in suggesting that, actually, there are more choices than the choice between nihilism and faith. In fact, the issue may not be faith as such but the fact that for millennia, Christianity has buttressed itself with a particular kind of metaphysics that has now seemingly reached the end of its life-span. But perhaps Buddhist metaphysics could provide an alternative here - or, at least, offer a direction of travel.

  George Pattison

  Buddhist, Issues, Choices

  "Towards hope". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. July 18, 2014.

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• The gun livens things up. The colonized European comes alive, not to the subject and problem of the violence of our circumstances, but because all armed actions subjects the force of circumstances to the force of events.

  Andreas Baader

  Gun, Events, Alive

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