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#1 The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers pocket-size books that are concise and beautifully produced. Each book in the series delivers a point of access to complex ideas.

#2 Wendell Phillips, a 70-year-old Massachusetts orator, writer, and abolitionist, gave a speech at Harvard University in 1881 for the Centennial Meeting of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. He argued that nihilism is the righteous and honorable resistance of a people crushed under an iron rule.

#3 Today, we typically use the word nihilism to mean being destructive, antisocial, and at least willing to use violence to achieve your destructive and antisocial goals. But this was not always the case.

#4 Nihilism is an ideology that says life is meaningless. However, to most people, this simply means they are doing nothing worth mentioning. Thus, they are constantly doing nothing worth mentioning.