Quotes About Nihilism

In other words, you decide to act as if existence might be justified by its goodness—if only you behaved properly. And it is that decision, that declaration of existential faith, that allows you to overcome nihilism, and resentment, and arrogance.

We must have the meaning inherent in a profound system of value or the horror of existence rapidly becomes paramount. Then, nihilism beckons, with its hopelessness and despair.

Nietzsche and Dostoevsky both foresaw that communism would appear dreadfully attractive—an apparently rational, coherent, and moral alternative to religion or nihilism—and that the consequences would be lethal.

Distress, whether psychic, physical, or intellectual, need not at all produce nihilism (that is, the radical rejection of value, meaning and desirability). Such distress always permits a variety of interpretations.

You decide that you will start treating Old Testament God, with all His terrible and oft-arbitrary-seeming power, as if He could also be New Testament God (even though you understand the many ways in which that is absurd). In other words, you decide to act as if existence might be justified by its goodness—if only you behaved properly. And it is that decision, that declaration of existential faith, that allows you to overcome nihilism, and resentment, and arrogance.

This left him with a single remaining escape from nihilism and totalitarianism: the emergence of the individual strong enough to create his own values, project them onto valueless reality, and then abide by them.

Individuals who take this route, this alternative to nihilism and totalitarianism, must therefore produce their own cosmology of values.

Everything seemed meaningless to me. All of a sudden. My own life, the lives of others, of animals of plants, the whole world. It no longer fitted together.

Bruno withdrew from the field of history more resolutely than Vigo; that is why I prefer the former's retrospect but the latter's prospect. As an anarch, I am determined to go along with nothing, ultimately take nothing seriously – at least not nihilistically, but rather as a border guard in no man's land, who sharpens his eyes and ears between the tides.

If the struggle against nihilism is to succeed, it must be fought out in the heart of each one of us. Everyone shared in the guilt, and there is no one who did not stand in need of the healing powers which are to be found in the realms of suffering.

Dos grandes miedos dominan a los hombres cuando el nihilismo culmina. El uno consiste en el espanto ante el vacío interior, y que le obliga a manifestarse hacia afuera a cualquier precio por medio de despliegue de poder, dominio espacial y velocidad acelerada. El otro opera de fuera hacia dentro como ataque del poderoso mundo a la vez demoniaco y automatizado.

Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end.

But I no longer had a taste for anything, a wish for anything, a love for anybody, a desire for anything whatever, any ambition, or any hope.

we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life.

What has come to light is neither nihilism nor cynicism, as one might have expected, but a quite extraordinary confusion over elementary questions of morality—as if an instinct in such matters were truly the last thing to be taken for granted in our time.

Famously, there's not really anywhere to go after nihilism. It's not progressing toward anything, it's a statement of outrage, however brilliant.

Living is such an absurd occupation.

Nihilism is not overcome by arguments or analyses, it is tamed by love and care. Any disease of the soul must be conquered by a turning of one's soul. This turning is done through one's own affirmation of one's worth—an affirmation fueled by the concern of others.

I have been merely oppressed by the weariness and tedium and vanity of things lately: nothing stirs me, nothing seems worth doing or worth having done: the only thing that I strongly feel worth while would be to murder as many people as possible so as to diminish the amount of consciousness in the world. These times have to be lived through: there is nothing to be done with them.

What we call nihilism (now) I simply call thought. What thinking doesn't lead to nihilism? (pg. 440)

You haven't entered a new age at all but one of upscale nihilism, deluxe nihilism.

Alle Wege führen zur Erkenntnis der Nichtigkeit aller Dinge, aber keiner führt zurück.

D]ie Urenkel der Nihilisten [...] Was, wenn ihnen Bibel, Grundgesetz und Strafrecht nie mehr gegolten hätten als Anleitung und Regelbuch zu einem Gesellschafsspiel? [...] Wenn wir ihre Gründe nicht mehr verstünden, weil es keine gibt?

Die Nihilisten glaubten immerhin, dass es etwas gebe, an das sie nicht glauben konnten. [...] Wir [...] sind die Urenkel der Nihilisten.