Nihilist Quotes

#1. You have to have hope. It's irresponsible to give false hope, which I think a lot of playwrights are guilty of. But I also think it's irresponsible to simply be a nihilist, which quite a lot of playwrights, especially playwrights younger than me, have become guilty of.

Tony Kushner

#2. To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

Christopher Hitchens

#3. I think you would have to be a nihilist to say that we are not making progress on cancer, just like you'd have to be hubristically optimistic to say that we have conquered cancer.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

#4. Socialism is nihilistic, in the henceforth precise sense that Nietzsche confers on the word. A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing, but one who does not believe in what exists.

Albert Camus

#5. I'm a kind person; I don't have a really nihilist streak in me, but I respond to that kind of humour.

Rachel Kushner

#6. Dying in our sleep won't solve anything in the long run, even if a nihilist would argue it's coming down the pike at some point anyway, so we might as well embrace it.

Ann Aguirre

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. A nihilist is a man who doesn't acknowledge any authorities, who doesn't accept a single principle on faith, no matter how much that principle may be surrounded by respect.

Ivan Turgenev

#10. I am no nihilist. I am not even a cynic. I am, actually, rather romantic. And here's my idea of romance: You will soon be dead. Life will sometimes seem long and tough and, god, it's tiring. And you will sometimes be happy and sometimes sad. And then you'll be
old. And then you'll be dead.

Tim Minchin

#11. I am a nihilist because I still believe in truth ...

Ray Brassier

#12. you're too angry to be a nihilist.

Lisa Henry

#13. 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

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

Marilyn Manson

#15. 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

#16. I am a terrorist and nihilist in theory as the others are with their weapons. Theoretical violence, not truth, is the only resource left us.

Jean Baudrillard

#17. One of my teachers told me I was a nihilist. He meant it as an insult but I took it as a compliment.

Susanna Kaysen

#18. I never feel weird about being the main character in the nontransferable, nonexistent movie of my life. That's totally fine. What makes me nervous is a growing suspicion that this movie is fucked up and devoid of meaning. The auteur is a nihilist.

Chuck Klosterman

#19. NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.

Ambrose Bierce

#20. With nihilism, no discussion is possible; for the nihilist logic doubts the existence of its interlocutor, and is not quite sure that it exists itself.

Victor Hugo

#21. If I didn't work in television or film, if I didn't have the right look, I never took it personally. Because there was always the theatre. I'm not a nihilist, I'm an optimist. And that has served me well in this profession.

Kim Cattrall

#22. The born again nihilist has nothing to blame for their fall

Dean Cavanagh

#23. [T]he worst kind of nihilist - the kind who isn't even aware he's a nihilist.

David Foster Wallace

#24. The young nihilists," Dad called us.
"What are nihilists?"
"Nihilists believe that nothing has any meaning. They believe in nothing."
"Yeah," said Earl. "I'm a nihilist.
"Me, too," I said.
"Good for you," Dad said, grinning. Then he stopped grinning and said, "Don't tell your mom.

Jesse Andrews

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

Sebastian Horsley

#26. In his heart he was highly delighted with his friend's suggestion, but he thought it a duty to conceal his feeling. He was not a nihilist for nothing!

Ivan Turgenev

#27. Art as the single superior counter-force against all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, anti-Nihilist par excellence.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#28. 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

#29. One cannot be a part-time nihilist.

Albert Camus

#30. You go to jail for drinking beer and then walking with your bike. You go to jail for smoking a joint. For abortion. This is a nihilist policy which hurts people.

Janusz Palikot

#31. I might be a nihilist except that I don't believe in anything.

Mitchell Heisman

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

John Green

#33. 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

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

Richard M. Weaver