62 Apocalypse Quotes

In times of uncertainty and chaos, the concept of an apocalypse captures the imagination, evoking a range of emotions from fear and despair to hope and resilience. As daunting as the end of the world may seem, it also offers a unique lens through which we can reflect on our lives, our societies, and our deepest beliefs. This carefully curated collection of 62 apocalypse quotes dives into these profound themes, featuring insights from literary greats, visionary filmmakers, and influential thinkers. Whether you're seeking inspiration, solace, or a deeper understanding, these quotes provide a thought-provoking glimpse into the human spirit when faced with the ultimate test.

1. “This is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.” - T.S. Eliot

2. “To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.” - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

3. “Death and Famine and War and Pollution continued biking towards Tadfield. And Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty To Animals, Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping but secretly No Alcohol Lager, and Really Cool People travelled with them.” - Neil Gaiman

4. “You're Hell's Angels, then? What chapter are you from?''REVELATIONS. CHAPTER SIX.” - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

5. “He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” - Cormac McCarthy

6. “Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.” - Alan Moore

7. “That's where all of us are standing now, he thought. On the fat kindling of past sins.” - Walter M. Miller Jr.

8. “What if nobody showed up at Armageddon?” - C R Strahan

9. “At the round earth's imagined corners blowYour trumpets, angels, and arise, ariseFrom death, you numberless infinitiesOf souls, and to your scattered bodies go ;All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,All whom war, dea[r]th, age, agues, tyrannies,Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyesShall behold God, and never taste death's woe.But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space ;For, if above all these my sins abound,'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,Teach me how to repent, for that's as goodAs if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood. ” - John Donne

10. “Should the whole frame of nature round him break,In ruin and confusion hurled,He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack,And stand secure amidst a falling world.” - Joseph Addison

11. “It takes four angels to oversee an apocalypse: a recorder to make the book that would be scripture in the new world; a preserver to comfort and save those selected to be the first generation; an accuser to remind them why they suffer; and a destroyer to revoke the promise of survival and redemption, and to teach them the awful truth about furious sheltering grace.” - Chris Adrian

12. “I sat in the dark and thought: There’s no big apocalypse. Just an endless procession of little ones.” - Neil Gaiman

13. “Till her appointed course be run;Till on the darkness faint her breathFlown to the silent void, and DeathSit crowned upon the ashen sun.(“The Testimony of the Suns”)” - George Sterling

14. “What silence rules the ghostly hoursThat guard the close of human sleep!(“The Testimony of the Suns”)” - George Sterling

15. “And starward drifts the stricken world,Lone in unalterable gloomDead, with a universe for tomb,Dark, and to vaster darkness whirled.(“The Testimony of the Suns”)” - George Sterling

16. “A little while, their hunger unfulfilled,The mothlike worlds flit 'round the guttering sun.("Ephemera")” - George Sterling

17. “I love my virginity to the apocalypse.” - Scott Westerfeld

18. “For Alwyn's grandfather, who was known as "the greatest talker in the country," used words which no one else understood, words which he did not understand, and words which do not exist, to swell a passionate theme, to confound his neighbors in an argument, and for their own sake. He would say, for example, "My farm was the very apocalypse of fertility, but the renter has rested on his oars till it is good for nothing," or "Manifest the bounty to pass the salt shaker in my direction." Something of the Bible, something of an Irish inheritance, something of a liar's anxiety, made of his most ordinary remark a strange and wearisome oratory.” - Glenway Wescott

19. “Songs remain. They last...A song can last long after the events and the people in it are dust and dreams and gone. That's the power of songs.” - Neil Gaiman

20. “If it happens that the human race doesn't make it, then the fact that we were here once will not be altered, that once upon a time we peopled this astonishing blue planet, and wondered intelligently at everything about it and the other things who lived here with us on it, and that we celebrated the beauty of it in music and art, architecture, literature, and dance, and that there were times when we approached something godlike in our abilities and aspirations. We emerged out of depthless mystery, and back into mystery we returned,and in the end the mystery is all there is.” - James Howard Kunstler

21. “This new world was a vicious, sleek world made of street lights and tight jeans, sharp smiles and fast cars. This was a city, edited. A city, pared down to its bare minimums, beautiful and abusive.” - Maggie Stiefvater

22. “The guns reminded me that this was just an attempt to punch holes in the darkness that enveloped us now.” - Michael Poeltl

23. “I think this is irresponsible preaching and very dangerous, and especially when it is slanted toward children, I think it's totally irresponsible, because I see nothing biblical that points up to our being in the last days, and I just think it's an outrageous thing to do, and a lot of people are making a living—they've been making a living for 2,000 years—preaching that we're in the last days.” - Charles M. Schulz

24. “In moments Akiva was up in the ether, scarcely feeling the sting of ice crystals in the thin air. He let his glamour fall away, and his wings were like sheets of fire sweeping the black of the heavens. He moved at speed, onward toward another human city to find another doorway bitter with the devil's magic, and after that another, until all bore the black handprint....Once all the doors were marked, the end would begin. And it would begin with fire.” - Laini Taylor

25. “On the day the world is blown up, the playwright whose show opened the night before will be leafing past the news section of the Times to find his review--as he ascends through the stratosphere, oblivious.” - Arthur Miller

26. “Oh, really? Do you wake up heaving from bloody dreams thatpromise destruction like some crazy street guy forecasting theApocalypse? Did you slam a door in your dad’s face hours before he died?Does everyone, cops included, think you’re a pestering loon ’cause‘accident’ doesn’t sit right with you, nor the many other freakouts, likethe car that keeps showing up on your street, with someone sitting in it,doing like, nothing? No? Oh no? Didn’t think so. Life sucks for everyone.Jump or deal with it.” - Courtney Vail

27. “Dean, you've been to Hell, I started the Apocalypse, and we're supposed to be possessed by an archangel and the devil. Now you're being skeptical?” - Keith R. A. DeCandido

28. “Bodies lay in the sun. Bodies stood in the sun.” - N.J. Hallard

29. “I would wish you gods speed but I don’t want you to waste time looking for him.” - Steve Merrick

30. “CHEERS, CARTER. At least you have the sense to hand me the microphone for important things.Honestly, he drones on and on about his plans for the Apocalypse, but he makes no plans at all for the school dance. My brother's priorities are severely skewed.Sadie Kane” - Rick Riordan

31. “I think you're crazy good at this survival stuff, Cary."His shoulders sag. He gives me a small, relieved smile and we start walking again, his step a little lighter than it was before. It feels strange to have that kind of power over someone."I mean, you're crazy good at it for a stoner who couldn't seem to get his shit together academically at all," I add.” - Courtney Summers

32. “God, you mean I lost my virginity to the apocalypse?"Morgan sighed again. "The whole thing was really embarrassing; my parents sent me to Brooklyn when they found out." She shrugged. "I thought I’d be safe in a gay bar, okay? What were you doing in there anyway?"Lace looked at me sidelong. "You were where?"I took a sip of beer, swallowed it. "I, uh, hadn’t been in the city...very long. I didn’t know.” - Scott Westerfeld

33. “If the world explore all my dark fantasy, will change for the better”.” - Alexandar Tomov

34. “He’s going to kill everyone on this planet, reduce the human race to dust. There will be no one to stop him. You are the only one who can. - Aiden Deverill” - Alexandra May

35. “Mark Spitz didn't ask about Harry. You never asked about the characters that disappeared from a Last Night story. You knew the answer. The plague had a knack for narrative closure.” - COLSON WHITEHEAD

36. “Mark Spitz had met plenty of the divine-retribution folks over the months. This was their moment; they were umbrella salesmen standing outside a subway entrance in a downpour. The human race deserved the plague, we brought it on ourselves for poisoning the planet, for the Death of God, the calculated brutalities of the global economic system, for driving primordial species to extinction: the entire collapse of values as evidenced by everything from nuclear fission to reality television to alternate side of the street parking. Mark Spitz could only endure these harangues for a minute or two before he split. It was boring.The plague was the plague. You were wearing galoshes, or you weren't.” - COLSON WHITEHEAD

37. “Kittridge closed his eyes. So, the end. It would happen instantaneously, a painless departure, quicker than thought. he felt the presence of his body one last time: the taste of air in his lungs, the blood surging in his veins, the drumlike beating of his heart. The bomb was dropping toward them."I've got you," he said, hugging Tim fiercely; and again, over and over, so that the boy would be hearing these words. "I've got you, I've got you, I've got you, I've got you.” - Justin Cronin

38. “It is an edged cliché that the world is most pleasant in the years of a Waning Sun. It is true that the weather is not so driven, that everywhere there is a sense of slowing down, and most places experience a few years where the summers do not burn and the winters are not yet overly fierce. It is the classic time of romance. It's a time that seductively beckons higher creatures to relax, postpone. It's the last chance to prepare for the end of the world.” - Vernor Vinge

39. “You know what? Fuck it. Just fuck it. The Rising didn't manage to wipe out the human race, it just made us turn into even bigger assholes than we were before. Hear that, mad science? You failed. You were supposed to kill us all, and instead you turned us into monsters.” - Mira Grant

40. “I did it thirty-five minutes ago.” - Alan Moore

41. “This guy is funny. But is he safe? And how much is that worth when the world itself has ceased to exist?” - Isabella Olivia Ellis

42. “Isn't it strange that all life can pretty much end, but the universe goes on as it is? No one else exists, but the moon keeps shining and the stars keep falling.” - Isabella Olivia Ellis

43. “John has a narrow mind. For him, neither the beauty nor the prosperity of the city of Ephesus is worth a second glance. Ephesus was situated at the end of the Silk Road from China and the caravan route from India which used to pass through the Parthian Empire en route to the West. But the prophet is quite unaware that this particular world exists at all. Even culture means absolutely nothing to him; for example, in 18:22 he rejoices that not only song but also the sound of the flute have disappeared. The world which he knows is limited to the seven churches whose Christianity corresponded with his own; and that in but a single province of the Roman Empire, namely Asia. As to the rest, he is only familiar with the mother church in Jerusalem and the sister church in Rome.John is utterly obsessed by Rome. The fact that this particular metropolis had bestowed both law and peace upon no less than one-half of the world never got through to him at all. He is also quite oblivious of the fact that Rome oppresses nations and exploits slaves. He could not care less about national or social considerations. He abominates the "whore on the seven hills" simply because Rome is persecuting Christians. This is precisely what the Apocalypse is all about: innocent suffering.” - Gilles Quispel

44. “The last to fall were the buildings, distant and solemn, the gravestones for an entire world.” - Dan Wells

45. “Many [Tudor-era religious radicals] believed then, exactly as Christian fundamentalists do today, that they lived in the 'last days' before Armageddon and, again just as now, saw signs all around in the world that they took as certain proof that the Apocalypse was imminent. Again like fundamentalists today, they looked on the prospect of the violent destruction of mankind without turning a hair. The remarkable similarity between the first Tudor Puritans and the fanatics among today's Christian fundamentalists extends to their selective reading of the Bible, their emphasis on the Book of Revelation, their certainty of their rightness, even to their phraseology. Where the Book of Revelation is concerned, I share the view of Guy, that the early church fathers released something very dangerous on the world when, after much deliberation, they decided to include it in the Christian canon."[From the author's concluding Historical Note]” - C.J. Sansom

46. “Nowdays, Rosie the Rivetere was a former soccer mom who had just opened her own catering business when Last Night came down and her husband and kids were eaten by a parking attendant at the local megamall’s discount- appliance emporium.” - COLSON WHITEHEAD

47. “I’d once again see that bob of blonde hair back on my pillow, that pink hot smile beaming toward me as I heroically win her heart in some kind of Count of Monte Cristo or Great Gatsby-esque gesture… you know minus the long imprisonment or swimming pool death!” - Tom Conrad

48. “He grumbles incoherently, opens the window a fraction and continues to smoke away. It’s like every time Sidney Drake enters a new location he has to readjust the atmosphere, akin to one of those sci-fi shows where they oxygenate the planet, but for my dad it’s in a suffocating reverse. He replaces the clean wholesome air with a non-stop puff of toxic poison.” - Tom Conrad

49. “You and I are victims of the same disease. We're fighting the same war, just different battles in different theaters, and it's way too late for me to hate you for anything, because we're the same damn thing. My soul, your conscience, whatever's left of me woven into whatever's left of you, all tangled up and conjoined. We're in this together, corpse.” - Isaac Marion

50. “I steal one glance over my shoulder as soon as we are far from the foreboding luminance of the neon glow, and it is there that my stomach leaps into my throat. Squatting just shy of the light and partially concealed by the shade of an alley is a sinister silhouette beneath a crimson cowl, beaming a demonic smile which spans from cheek to swollen cheek.” - Nathan Reese Maher

51. “Call me crazy, but there is something terribly wrong with this city.” - Nathan Reese Maher

52. “There is a stillness between us, a period of restlessness that ties my stomachin a hangman’s noose. It is this same lack in noise that lives, there! in thedarkness of the grave, how it frightens me beyond all things.” - Nathan Reese Maher

53. “I rouse Emily to our guests, as she finishes off our fifteenth snowman by setting the head atop its torso. She stands limp at my direction, pointing out the coming shadows and I cannot help but hear a muffled sigh as she decapitates her latest creation with a single push of her hand.” - Nathan Reese Maher

54. “Do we not each dream of dreams? Do we not dance on the notes of lostmemories? Then are we not each dreamers of tomorrow and yesterday, since dreamsplay when time is askew? Are we not all adrift in the constant sea of trial and when all is done, do we not all yearn for ships to carry us home?” - Nathan Reese Maher

55. “History doesn’t start with a tall buildingand a card with your name written on it, but jokes do. I think someone is takingus for suckers and is playing a mean game.” - Nathan Reese Maher

56. “I think you’re wrong,” she said. “I don’t think humans were supposed to die out during the Infection. And I think those of us who survived have a duty to protect the next generation. We’re starting over, Justin. We’re rebuilding the world. And this time, we’re going to make it even better.” ~ Carly Daniels” - Lissa Bryan

57. “People could say a lot of negative things about the apocalypse, but there was no arguing the air quality in Los Angeles had really improved.” - Peter Clines

58. “I can't believe that we have reached the end of everything. The red dust is frightening. The carbon dioxide is real. Water is expensive. Bio-tech has created as many problems as it has fixed, but we're here, we're alive, we're the human race, we have survived wars and terrorism and scarcity and global famine, and we have made it back from the brink, not once but many times. History is not a suicide note - it's a record of our survival.” - Jeanette Winterson

59. “To stop. To cease, just for a moment. To turn your back on the world, to close your eyes - to see the nothing that is not rather than the nothing that is everywhere around you. To just be quiet in your mind for a little minute. There are paradises even yet on the abandoned plains of the earth -- and they are not filled with fecund flowering Edens but rather just with sweet unerring silences.” - Alden Bell

60. “Quinn seemed to have become one of a jaded philosophical society, a group of arcane deviates. Their raison d'etre was a kind of mystical masochism, forcing initiates toward feats of occult daredevilry - "glimpsing the inferno with eyes of ice", to take from the notebook a phrase that was repeated often and seemed a sort of chant of power. As I suspected, hallucinogenic drugs were used by the sect, and there was no doubt that they believed themselves communing with strange metaphysical venues. Their chief aim, in true mystical fashion, was to transcend common reality in the search for higher states of being, but their stratagem was highly unorthodox, a strange detour along the usual path toward positive illumination. Instead, they maintained a kind of blasphemous fatalism, a doomed determinism which brought them face to face with realms of obscure horror. Perhaps it was this very obscurity that allowed them the excitement of their central purpose, which seemed to be a precarious flirting with personal apocalypse, the striving for horrific dominion over horror itself.("The Dreaming In Nortown")” - Thomas Ligotti

61. “The visage of Lucifer mushroomed into hideousness above the cloudbank, rising slowly like some titan climbing to its feet after ages of imprisonment in the Earth.” - Walter M. Miller Jr.

62. “Knowlede is power and Absolute Knowledge is Absolute Power or the Power of Truth, which is constantly shaping events and circumstances to reveal the errors in our beliefs.” - Matthew A. Petti