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Who really said it

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man

Verified — Human, All Too Human, 1878 Friedrich Nietzsche 1844–1900 · German philosopher and philologist
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Genuine, and locatable to the aphorism: Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (Human, All Too Human), Volume I, 1878, aphorism 71 — which Nietzsche titled ‘Die Hoffnung’ (‘Hope’). The German closes: ‘sie ist in Wahrheit das übelste der Übel, weil sie die Qual der Menschen verlängert.’ The English everyone quotes is Helen Zimmern’s translation, lightly re-cut — and it is public domain.

Last verified 20 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Hope in reality is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man” —Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human I §71 (1878), trans. Helen Zimmern. Public domain — free to reuse.

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Provenance

The source

Work
Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Volume I
Aphorism
§71, ‘Die Hoffnung’ (Hope)
Published
1878, in German
Popular English
Helen Zimmern, 1909/1910

Zeus wollte nämlich, daß der Mensch, auch noch so sehr durch die anderen Übel gequält, doch das Leben nicht wegwerfe, sondern fortfahre, sich immer von neuem quälen zu lassen. Dazu gibt er dem Menschen die Hoffnung: sie ist in Wahrheit das übelste der Übel, weil sie die Qual der Menschen verlängert. Human, All Too Human I §71

Nietzsche’s German. The passage is his reading of Pandora’s jar: hope is not the consolation left behind after the evils escaped — it is the evil that stayed, and Zeus left it there deliberately.

Human, All Too Human — Zimmern's English at Wikisource

How we traced it

  • We checked the German directly. The aphorism is titled ‘Die Hoffnung,’ it is about hope, and the word in the closing clause is die Hoffnung. A claim circulates that Nietzsche really wrote this of pity (Mitleid) and that the quote is therefore altered — that claim is false; the German does not support it.
  • The circulating English is Helen Zimmern’s: ‘Therefore he gives man hope,—in reality it is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.’ The popular form just re-cuts her clause to start with ‘Hope’ Zimmern text ↗.
  • The other early English, Alexander Harvey’s of 1908, reads ‘the greatest of evils for it lengthens the ordeal of man’ — which is not the circulating wording. That isolates Zimmern as the source of the version you have read Harvey 1908 ↗.
Public domain

Free to reuse, in both languages. Nietzsche died in 1900, so the German is public domain worldwide; Helen Zimmern’s English was published in 1909/1910 and she died in 1934, so her translation is public domain in the United States and in life-plus-seventy countries alike. Alexander Harvey’s 1908 version is a safe alternative. Do not quote the modern translations — Hollingdale (1986) and Faber–Lehmann (1995) are under copyright, and neither produces this wording anyway. This is not legal advice.

This reflects the original work, which is public domain. If your exact English wording comes from a specific modern translation, that translation may itself still be under copyright — check the edition you quote.

Fact-check

Two things people get wrong

The attribution is right and the source is exact. What circulates instead are two confident corrections that are themselves mistaken — which is why this page exists.

False the correction is wrong

A widely repeated claim holds that the aphorism is about Mitleid (pity) and that ‘hope’ is a corruption. We checked the German: the aphorism is titled ‘Die Hoffnung,’ and the closing clause reads sie ist in Wahrheit das übelste der Übel — sie being hope. The quote is about hope.

Also false real, not fiction

Irvin Yalom’s 1992 novel When Nietzsche Wept gives its Nietzsche character a compressed version, and because far more people have read the novel than aphorism 71, many assume the line was invented for it. Yalom was paraphrasing the real text.

Helen Zimmern, not the modern ones translation lineage

The wording you know is Zimmern’s, which matters practically: hers is public domain, while the Hollingdale and Faber–Lehmann translations are in copyright — and neither of those produces this phrasing.

Genuinely Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human I §71 (1878), in an aphorism he titled ‘Hope’ — and the familiar English is Helen Zimmern’s public-domain translation read it ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

It is a deliberate inversion of the story everyone knows. In the usual telling of Pandora’s jar, all the evils fly out and hope remains behind as mankind’s consolation. Nietzsche reads the same myth and concludes that hope stayed in the jar because it was the worst thing in it.

The cruelty is in the mechanism, not the mood: Zeus wants humans to keep suffering rather than throw life away, so he supplies the one thing that makes suffering bearable enough to continue. Hope is not a comfort in this reading — it is the reason the torment can be extended.

Hope stayed in the jar not as the consolation, but as the worst thing in it.

Why the translation matters here

Zimmern, 1909: ‘in reality it is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man’ — the ancestor of the popular wording.

Harvey, 1908: ‘the greatest of evils for it lengthens the ordeal of man’ — same German, different English, never went viral.

Both are public domain; both are faithful. The difference is entirely a translator’s ear.

Nietzsche’s own word is übelste — the most evil, the worst — playing against Übel, the evils that escaped the jar. English cannot easily keep that echo.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Hope Doubt

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Human, All-Too-Human — Zimmern translationen.wikisource.org

The public-domain English that the circulating wording derives from.
Human, All Too Human — Harvey translation (1908)gutenberg.org

The competing early English, useful for showing which translator’s phrasing actually went viral.
Menschliches, Allzumenschliches — German textzeno.org

The German original of aphorism 71, ‘Die Hoffnung’.

The true author

About Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

1844–1900 · German philosopher and philologist

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) wrote in aphorisms, which makes him the most quotable of philosophers and the most misquoted — a stray sentence of his survives detachment from its argument better than almost anyone’s. Human, All Too Human (1878) marks his break with Wagner and with Schopenhauer’s pessimism, and is the book where he began dismantling comforting ideas one short entry at a time. Hope got entry 71.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Volume I, aphorism 71 (‘Die Hoffnung’). 1878. English: trans. Helen Zimmern, 1909.

MLA (9th ed.)

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Human, All Too Human. 1878. Translated by Helen Zimmern, 1909.

APA (7th ed.)

Nietzsche, F. (1878). Human, all too human (H. Zimmern, Trans., 1909).

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Hope in reality is the worst of all evils’?” Last verified 20 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/hope-in-reality-is-the-worst-of-all-evils-because-it

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