One’s condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one. One feels one’s being, one becomes aware of the enormous apparatus of nothingness – the hum of a hi-fi set, the emptiness of a pointless interruption, one becomes aware of the war between each of us, how the nothingness in each of us seeks to attack the being of others, how our being in turn is attacked by the nothingness in others. Norman Mailer
Our bodies are given life from the midst of nothingness. Existing where there is nothing is the meaning of the phrase, Form is emptiness. That all things are provided for by nothingness is the meaning of the phrase, Emptiness is form. One should not think that these are two separate things. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai 1999 starring Forest Whitaker & John Tormey & Henry Silva & Cliff Gorman & Isaach De Bankole & Camille Winbush & Tricia Vessey & Richard Portnow et al, director Jim Jarmusch
They ain’t got nothing; there’s nothing to have. Hoffa 1992 starring Jack Nicholson & Danny De Vito & Armand Assante & J T Walsh & John C Reilly & Frank Whaley & Kevin Anderson & John P Ryan & Robert Prosky & Natalie Nogulich & Nicholas Pryor et al, director Danny De Vito
Nothing. A great big nothing. Organised. Scientific. We are Boston’s finest. We are dummies. The Thomas Crown Affair 1968 starring Steve McQueen & Faye Dunaway & Paul Burke & Jack Weston & Gordon Pinsent & Biff McGuire & Yaphet Kotto & Addison Powell et al, director Norman Jewison
You got nothing. Nothing. The Untouchables 1987 starring Kevin Costner & Charles Martin Smith & Sean Connery & Andy Garcia & Patricia Clarkson & Richard Bradford & Jack Kehoe & Robert De Niro et al, director Brian De Palma, Capone to Ness
Well, sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand. Cool Hand Luke 1967 starring Paul Newman & George Kennedy & Strother Martin & Jo van Fleet & Joy Harmon & Morgan Woodward & Luke Askew & Robert Donner & Clifton James et al, director Stuart Rosenberg
I had absolutely nothing. And I threw it all away. Red Dwarf s8e4: Cassandra, Rimmer to Lister, BBC 1999
Sir, you’ve got nothing, no life, no partner, no future, you’re so easy to shop for. Red Dwarf s12e5: M-Corp, Kryten to Lister on Lister’s birthday
Dark energy is the energy of the vacuum. The energy of nothing. Even nothingness has energy and it’s pushing the galaxies apart in a runaway universe ... So it looks like the end of everything. Professor Michio Kaku
Energy from nothing: this may be a key component. Michio Kaku, Sci-Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible s1e1: How to Explore the Universe, Science 2009
Our universe is not slowing down as we once thought but is speeding up, is accelerating. It’s in a runaway mode. We now believe there is something called Dark Energy – the energy of nothing – that is pushing the galaxies apart and is destroying the universe. Michio Kaku
It all depends on how you define nothing. Michio Kaku
70,692. Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It’s nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that ... Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and sob probes, and you would mark them. Women – and they can be wives, lovers, gaunt muses, fat nurses, obsessions, devourers, exes, nemeses – will wake and turn to these men and ask, with female need-to-know, ‘What is it?’ And the men will say, ‘Nothing. No it isn’t anything really. Just sad dreams’. Martin Amis, The Information
Colonel: We can’t just do nothing.
General: Why not? It’s usually best. Lawrence of Arabia 1962 starring Peter O’Toole & Alec Guinness & Anthony Quinn & Jack Hawkins & Jose Ferrer & Anthony Quayle & Claude Rains & Arthur Kennedy & Omar Sharif et al, director David Lean
No man can live faced with Death, knowing everything’s nothingness. The Seventh Seal 1957 starring Max von Sydow & Bengt Ekerot & Gunnar Bjornstrand & Nils Poppe & Bibi Andersson & Ake Fridell & Inga Gill & Erik Strandmark & Bertil Anderberg et al, director Ingmar Bergman
We would do absolutely nothing. Now that’s a blunt, truthful answer. Gough Whitlam, re East Timor
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good men should look on and do nothing. John Stuart Mill, address University of St Andrews 1st February 1867
cf.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Edmund Burke, attributions & variations
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little. Edmund Burke
This is a programme about nothing. James Burke: Connections s2e5: Something For Nothing, BBC 1994
In the middle of the seventeenth century if you were in earshot of the Pope here in Rome you could not talk about nothing. A sort of double nothing ... The Pope said there was no such thing. ibid.
There are no absolutes ... Buddhism is all about that. You know – no absolutes, no centre to the universe, nothing but er nothingness. James Burke, Connections sIII: Drop the Apple, BBC 1997
And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope. Robert Frost, The Death of the Hired Man, 1914
Expect nothing. Live frugally
on surprise. Alice Walker, Expect Nothing, 1973
When in doubt what should be done, do nothing. William Lamb, Lord Melbourne 1779-1848
The Laws of Physics allow that to happen. And it means that our whole universe, everything we see, everything that matters to us today, could have arisen out of precisely nothing. Professor Lawrence Krauss
Nothing is not exactly what they thought it was. It was a little bit different – the laws of Physics tell you even empty space is much more interesting than you thought it was: empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of stuff that’s popping in and out of existence every second. And what’s more amazing is that we’re learning if you take just a bit of space and get rid of all the particles and all the radiation and everything, that it still weights something and we don’t understand why. Lawrence Krauss, The Unebelievers, with Richard Dawkins, 2013
It is now becoming clear that everything can, and probably did, come from nothing. Professor Robert A J Matthews, Ashton University
When did the clocks start ticking? Twelve billion years ago there was absolutely nothing: no matter, no space, no time. We may never know how or why it happened, but a seething mass of energy smaller than an atom grew from nothing ... A giant fireball of unimaginable heat. Universe: Big Bang
You’ve seen the world, and all you’ve seen is nothing; and everything, as well, that you have said and heard is nothing. You’ve sprinted everywhere between here and the horizon; it is nothing. And all the possessions you’ve treasured up at home are nothing. Omar Khayyam, Quatrains – Ballades
The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our own nothingness. Andre Malraux, La Condition Humaine
The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some ten billion years after the universe evolved literally out of nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice. Professor Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale
It’s only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose. Joseph Conrad, Outcast of the Islands, 1896
To whom nothing is given, of him can nothing be required. Henry Fielding 1707-54, Joseph Andrews, 1742
Nothing can be treated out of nothing. Lucretius, c.94-55 B.C.
Nothing is wasted, nothing is in vain:
The seas roll over but the rocks remain. A P Herbert, Tough at the Top