The exact words
“Amor fati: let that henceforth be my love!”Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft), section 276, “For the New Year,” translated by Thomas Common
✓ VerifiedFound in a primary source: the original book, speech transcript, letter or recording.
What people get wrong
Common reading
Shrugging and accepting whatever happens because you cannot change it.
Shrugging and accepting whatever happens because you cannot change it.
Closer to the original
Nietzsche asks for much more than acceptance. In Ecce Homo he says the necessary must not just be borne but loved. The point is to say yes to your whole life, including its losses.
Nietzsche asks for much more than acceptance. In Ecce Homo he says the necessary must not just be borne but loved. The point is to say yes to your whole life, including its losses.
Timeline
- 1882In a New Year's section of The Gay Science, Nietzsche makes a resolution to see what is necessary in things as beautiful, and names it amor fati.
- 1888In Ecce Homo he calls amor fati his “formula for greatness”: wanting nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.
- 1908Ecce Homo is published, eight years after Nietzsche's death.
- TodayThe phrase is popular with modern fans of Stoicism, although the Latin words come from Nietzsche, not from the ancient Stoics.
Use it in a speech
Nietzsche's phrase amor fati, love of fate, asks something harder than acceptance: to want one's life exactly as it has been.
~8 secondsto say aloud
Pausenone needed in writing
Best spotopening sentence
Nietzsche had a phrase, amor fati, love your fate. Not every year here went to plan. Love it anyway. It made you who you are walking across this stage.
~11 secondsto say aloud
Pauseafter “love your fate”
Best spotthe closing section
Questions people ask
What does amor fati mean?
“Love of fate.” It means embracing everything that happens in your life, good and bad, as part of a whole you would not change.
Who said amor fati?
Friedrich Nietzsche, first in The Gay Science (1882), section 276, and again in Ecce Homo (written 1888).
Is amor fati a Stoic idea?
The attitude is close to Stoic advice, such as Epictetus urging people to want things to happen as they do happen. But the two-word Latin phrase is Nietzsche's, and he was critical of the Stoics in other places.
How do you pronounce it?
Roughly “AH-mor FAH-tee.”
Cite this quote
These cite the original text directly, so you can use them in an essay or paper. Always check your teacher's required style.
MLANietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Section 276. 1882. Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52881.
APANietzsche, F. (1882). The Gay Science. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52881
CHICAGOFriedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 276, 1882.
IN TEXT (APA)(Nietzsche, 1882)