Life often feels like an endless search for meaning. Sometimes, it appears empty and cold, making us question everything. Nihilism speaks to those dark moments, offering a raw look at existence.
In this article, we share some of the best quotes on nihilism. These words can resonate with anyone who has felt the weight of nothingness. They come from great thinkers who faced life’s void and didn’t look away.
Famous Nihilism Quotes from Literature
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
“Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.”
“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
“Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”
“What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven.”
“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”
“We are born with a yearning to return to our primal state.”
“For as long as I could remember, I had wanted to die.”
“I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity.”
“Hell is other people.”
“we only regret the chances we didn’t take.”
“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”
“There is no truth. There is only perception.”
“Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
“In the face of absurdity, we invent reasons to live.”
“Life is an illusion, a shadow, a story, and the greatest good is little enough.”
“Everything is meaningless in a world that immediately forgets you the moment you’re gone.”
“We live in a universe where there’s no meaning, and yet we give it some through our actions.”
“The meaning of life is that it stops.”
“In the beginning, there were no reasons. Now, there’s no reason.”
“It all fades away in time – memories, people, dreams.”
“everything we do is a futile attempt to escape the inevitable.”
Thought-Provoking Nihilism Quotes from Philosophers
“Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”
“The literal meaning of life is whatever you’re doing that prevents you from killing yourself.”
“What is the meaning of life? Whatever you want it to be.”
“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
“We are condemned to be free.”
“I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.”
“The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.”
“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.”
“we’ll all become stories.”
“Do not fear death so much but rather the inadequate life.”
“All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.”
“Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
“The only truth is that we are all going to die.”
“In a world where everything is meaningless, meaning itself becomes meaningless.”
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
“Nothing is everything to a nihilist.”
“We are born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.”
“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.”
“Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.”
“The meaning of life is that it stops.”
“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the universe. That makes us something very special.”
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.”
“Existence precedes and rules essence.”
“Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can’t.”
“We are the ones who create the void, not the void the ones who create us.”
“Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”
“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
Intriguing Nihilism Quotes from Movies
“The universe is a dark place. I’m trying to make it brighter before I die, something my ancestors failed at.”
“We mustn’t succumb to the illusion that life is noble, or its end tragic.”
“We’re all pretty much alike; the difference does not lie in what we do, but in why we do it.”
“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet.”
“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”
“Have you ever transcended space and time?”
“We’re all part of the same compost heap.”
“Death is the road to awe.”
“Life’s a burst of joy and pain and then, like yours, it’s gone.”
“It’s a cold world out there. Sometimes I feel like I’m getting a little frosty myself.”
“It’s all a dream, one that will end in death and oblivion.”
“All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”
“The things you own end up owning you.”
“What’s the point of worrying in the face of the inevitable?”
“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”
“Everything you do, someone out there can do it better.”
“What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?”
“We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year-old carbon.”
“The meaning of life is that it ends.”
“You’re alone at the center of it all, and the void is just a step away.”
“It’s a crazy world. Someone ought to sell tickets.”
“Everyone ends up dead; it’s just a matter of when.”
“There are no answers, only choices.”
“We live in a society of an imposed reality, where materialism reigns supreme.”
“We’re born into a losing struggle.”
“Life is but a fleeting whisper in the void.”
“Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man.”
“Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain. Meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure.”
Inspirational Nihilism Quotes for Self-Reflection
“Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”
“He who lives without folly is not as wise as he may think.”
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
“When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
“All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”
“Once you realize that all the things you think are so important are actually meaningless, the universe starts to make a lot more sense.”
“Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
“If we must say that life is absurd, let us also say that it is magnificent.”
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
“I don’t know what the meaning of life is, but I do know that I’m here to find out.”
“The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.”
“To be is to be perceived. And so to know thyself is only possible through the eyes of the other.”
“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
“In a world where you can be anything, be kind.”
“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
“The sun rises every day whether you want it to or not. Embrace the new day, even if it feels pointless.”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
“Sometimes, the only way to find meaning is to create your own.”
“Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? Because it doesn’t. It simply is, and we simply are.”
“Even in the darkest places, a glimmer of light can be found.”
“There is no truth. There is only perception.”
“Existence precedes and rules essence.”
“Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.”
“Life isn’t about finding yourself; it’s about creating yourself.”
“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.”
Contemplative Nihilism Quotes from Celebrities
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
“Life is meaningless, but worth living, provided you recognize it’s meaningless.”
“I don’t know what’s worse: to find something or to find nothing.”
“We are born without purpose, we live without meaning, and we die without significance.”
“Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”
“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”
“It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.”
“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
“we’ll all become stories.”
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
“Those who believe in nothing are very, very jealous and angry at those who believe in something.”
“You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.”
“The universe is indifferent. Who created it? Why are we here? They cannot be answered and the questions themselves are meaningless.”
“The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.”
“When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you.”
“Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long.”
“Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf.”
“To be or not to be, that is the question.”
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
“We live in a rainbow of chaos.”
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
“Life is but a meaningless chase for dreams that will never come true.”
“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight.”
“The only meaning of life is the one you create.”
“People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
“there is only dust and ashes.”
“Each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity.”
Powerful Nihilism Quotes About Life
“Life is meaningless, but that doesn’t mean we should not live it to the fullest.”
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
“everything is a gag.”
“All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.”
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”
“We are condemned to be free.”
“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.”
“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
“The literal meaning of life is whatever you’re doing that prevents you from killing yourself.”
“Life has no meaning, the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”
“The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning.”
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
“Existence is a party. You join after it’s started and you leave before it’s finished.”
“It is not man’s dreams that fail him. It is the lack of know-how required to bring those dreams into actuality.”
“We are born into a world of illusions. The wisest of us rise above them.”
“When the sun has set, no candle can replace it.”
“Everybody has their own private world they create, and since all of it is meaningless, everyone’s world is right.”
“Sometimes the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy.”
“The assumption that life should have meaning is where most people encounter their first philosophical dilemma.”
“In a universe that is suddenly and inexplicably bereft of meaning, the freedom of human beings becomes terrifying.”
“We derive meaning when we lose illusions and face reality.”
“A life devoid of purpose is a life not worth living. Yet, purpose itself is but an illusion.”
“To believe in something without reason is to live in a self-created prison.”
“The beauty of life is that it is pointless; once we accept that, we can truly begin to live.”
“There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by unfolding of his powers.”
“Our every action is neither noticed nor remembered, and yet we persist.”
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
“Why should I be bound to the rules of the world when the world itself is not bound by any rules?”
“The dread of death follows from the dread of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Understanding Nihilism Through Quotes
“Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”
“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point.”
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”
“Every choice we make depletes our strength for making future choices.”
“I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.”
“What is called liberation by one person is called destruction by another.”
“It is not a lack of love but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
“everything is a gag.”
“We are condemned to be free.”
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
“Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
“Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now – always.”
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
“When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”
“I rebel, therefore I exist.”
“Beyond good and evil lies the realm of the absolute.”
“Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, chaos is being yourself.”
“The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.”
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”
“Beneath the surface of every human being lies the tangle of contradictions that is the essence of life.”
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
Last Words
Nihilism can be a heavy subject, but quotes from great thinkers can offer a meaningful perspective on this philosophy. These quotes may help us understand the depth of human thought and the complexities of life. By reflecting on these words, we can find our own ways to navigate through life’s uncertainties.
Whether you agree with the ideas or not, nihilism challenges us to think differently about existence and meaning. It’s important to engage with different viewpoints to expand our understanding. So, take some time to ponder over these quotes. They might just change how you see the world.
