From Twilight of the Idols (Götzen-Dämmerung, 1889), “Maxims and Arrows,” aphorism 12: “Hat man sein warum? des Lebens, so verträgt man sich fast mit jedem wie?” The familiar English wording is Walter Kaufmann’s translation in The Portable Nietzsche — which actually reads “why of life”; the widely shared form swaps in “why in life.”
“If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how” Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1889), "Maxims and Arrows," 12; trans. Walter Kaufmann.
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Provenance
The source
Work
Twilight of the Idols (Götzen-Dämmerung)
Section
“Maxims and Arrows,” aphorism 12
First published
1889 (written 1888), in German
Translation
English wording follows Walter Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche (1954)
Hat man sein warum? des Lebens, so verträgt man sich fast mit jedem wie? — Der Mensch strebt nicht nach Glück; nur der Engländer thut das.
The German original, from “Sprüche und Pfeile” (Maxims and Arrows), 12. Kaufmann renders the first sentence “If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how.”
Quote Investigator traces the saying to Nietzsche’s 1889 Twilight of the Idols and lays out the competing English renderings in its 2019 investigation ↗.
Wikiquote lists the line under Twilight of the Idols, “Maxims and Arrows,” giving the German original alongside the “why in life … almost any how ↗” wording.
Nietzsche’s German original (1889) is long in the public domain. But the exact English wording shown here traces to Walter Kaufmann’s translation in The Portable Nietzsche (first published 1954), which remains in copyright. The public-domain Victorian translations (Thomas Common, 1896; Anthony Ludovici, 1911) use markedly different phrasing, so the modern “why … almost any how” form is not itself public domain.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
The mix-ups
This one is correctly credited to Nietzsche — the usual confusion is over who made it famous and exactly how it’s worded.
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Often assumed to beViktor Frankl popularizer, not author
Frankl quoted the line twice in Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) and it became inseparable from his work, so many now cite it as “Frankl’s.” But Frankl named Nietzsche as the source ↗ both times.
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Wording“in life” vs. “of life” drifted variant
The most-shared form says “our own why in life,” but Kaufmann’s published translation reads “our own why of life.” Both render the same German line from Maxims and Arrows, 12 ↗.
✓The thought and the source are genuinely Nietzsche’s — Twilight of the Idols, 1889 — and the polished English wording is Walter Kaufmann’s translation ↗.
Context
Why it resonates
Nietzsche buried the line in a rapid-fire list of maxims, but it carries one of his most portable ideas: that meaning (“why”) makes suffering and circumstance (“how”) bearable. Half a century later, Viktor Frankl — a psychiatrist who survived the Nazi camps — made it the emotional spine of Man’s Search for Meaning, which is why the two names are now so often linked.
He who has a why can bear almost any how.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher whose work on morality, nihilism, and the will to power reshaped modern thought. Twilight of the Idols, written in 1888 and published in 1889, was one of his last works before his mental collapse; its opening “Maxims and Arrows” is a string of aphorisms, including the one about the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of life.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source — Chicago
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1889), “Maxims and Arrows,” 12; trans. Walter Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking, 1954).
MLA (9th ed.)
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of the Idols. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche, Viking, 1954, “Maxims and Arrows,” no. 12.
APA (7th ed.)
Nietzsche, F. (1954). The portable Nietzsche (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). Viking. (Original work published 1889)
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how’?” Last verified 10 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-we-have-our-own-why-in-life-we-shall-get-along-with/