Twilight of the Idols

by

Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophical nihilism rejects fundamental aspects of human existence (such as morality or objective truth) on the basis that life is meaningless and moral truths are unknowable.

Nihilism Quotes in Twilight of the Idols

The Twilight of the Idols quotes below are all either spoken by Nihilism or refer to Nihilism. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
History and the Decline of Civilization  Theme Icon
).
Foreword Quotes

Nothing succeeds in which high spirits play no part.

Related Characters: Friedrich Nietzsche (speaker)
Page Number: 31
Explanation and Analysis:

Another form of recovery, in certain cases even more suited to me, is to sound out idols. …There are more idols in the world than there are realities: that is my ‘evil eye’ for this world, that is also my ‘evil ear’. … For once to pose questions here with a hammer and perhaps to receive for answer that famous hollow sound which speaks of inflated bowels—what a delight for one who has ears behind his ears—for an old psychologist and pied piper like me, in presence of whom precisely that which would like to stay silent has to become audible

Related Characters: Friedrich Nietzsche (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Hammer
Page Number: 31
Explanation and Analysis:
Maxims and Arrows Quotes

39. The disappointed man speaks. – I sought great human beings, I never found anything but the apes of their ideal.

Related Characters: Friedrich Nietzsche (speaker)
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:
The Problem of Socrates Quotes

In every age the wisest have passed the identical judgement on life: it is worthless. … Everywhere and always their mouths have uttered the same sound—a sound full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of weariness with life, full of opposition to life.

Related Characters: Friedrich Nietzsche (speaker), Socrates
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:

Judgements, value judgements concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms—in themselves such judgements are stupidities. One must reach out and try to grasp this astonishing finesse, that the value of life cannot be estimated.

Related Characters: Friedrich Nietzsche (speaker), Socrates
Page Number: 40
Explanation and Analysis:
What I Owe to the Ancients Quotes

Ultimately my mistrust of Plato extends to the very bottom of him: I find him deviated so far from all the fundamental instincts of the Hellenes, so morally infected, so much an antecedent Christian—he already has the concept ‘good’ as the supreme concept—that I should prefer to describe the entire phenomenon ‘Plato’ by the harsh term ‘higher swindle’ or, if you prefer, ‘idealism’, than by any other.

Related Characters: Friedrich Nietzsche (speaker), Plato
Page Number: 117
Explanation and Analysis:
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Nihilism Term Timeline in Twilight of the Idols

The timeline below shows where the term Nihilism appears in Twilight of the Idols. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Expeditions of an Untimely Man
History and the Decline of Civilization  Theme Icon
The Will to Power   Theme Icon
The Ideal vs. The Real  Theme Icon
Christianity and the “Revaluation of All Values”  Theme Icon
...and “reckless realism, reverence for everything factual.” How, then, has society become so chaotic and nihilistic? Nietzsche thinks the chaos is the result of society wanting to return to the 18th... (full context)