"Whoever has a why to live can support almost any how." The phrase seems born in a concentration camp. In fact, it was born half a century earlier, on the desk of a philosopher who never lived to see the Second World War.
The origin, in Nietzsche
The phrase is from Friedrich Nietzsche, in the book Twilight of the Idols, from 1888. In the original context, it is almost an aphorism about discipline: whoever has a strong enough objective can withstand any difficulty on the way to it. Nietzsche wasn't thinking about extreme suffering, he was thinking about purpose.
How the phrase reaches Frankl
It was the Jewish psychiatrist Viktor Frankl who gave the phrase the weight it carries today. Imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Frankl observed something that would change psychology after him: among prisoners who suffered exactly the same hunger, the same cold and the same violence, those who had "a reason" to live for survived better. In the book In Search of Meaning, he uses Nietzsche's phrase to name this clinical discovery, no longer an aphorism of discipline, but a finding observed at the most extreme limit of human pain.
From aphorism to logotherapy motto
The phrase became the unofficial motto of logotherapy, the method that Frankl created based on this experience: meaning is not something that you invent on your own, it is something that you discover, always facing outside yourself, in a work, in a love, or in the attitude with which you carry suffering that you cannot avoid. Where Nietzsche spoke of discipline, Frankl found survival. The phrase is the same. What changed was the size of the "how" she had to endure.
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See recommended readingsFrequently asked questions
Who said "those who have a why to live can tolerate almost any how"?
The phrase is from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, in the book Twilight of the Idols (1888). Decades later, psychiatrist Viktor Frankl adopted it as the motto of logotherapy.
What did Viktor Frankl do with this phrase?
Frankl observed, as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, that those who had a reason to live for survived better. He used Nietzsche's phrase to describe this clinical discovery in the book In Search of Meaning.
Does the phrase mean that suffering doesn't matter?
No. It means the opposite: when there is a real why (a work, a person, a meaning), suffering (the "how") is no longer what decides whether life is worth living.
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