‘All things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not the truth.’ Did German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, really say this? Not quite.

Popular culture has slightly misquoted Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900), possibly from two sources.

The correct quote on ‘All things are subject to interpretation…’ may come from his private notebooks; specifically, ‘Notes (1888),’ posthumously published in 1901, in the book, ‘The Will to Power.‘ Given Nietzsche’s reflections on power in these notes, it stands to reason that this work may be the source of this misquote (especially the latter part, ‘…a function of power…’). However, these notes do not contain the misquoted phrase.

The notebooks were subsequently translated in The Portable Nietzsche. The correct quote in full context is as follows.

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NOTES (1988)

[291]

That the value of an act should depend on what preceded it in consciousness—how false that is! And yet morality has been measured that way, even criminality.

The value of an act must be measured by its consequences, the utilitarians say: measuring it by its origin implies an impossibility, namely, knowing the origin.

But does one know the consequences? Perhaps as far as five steps. Who could say what an act stimulates, excites, provokes against itself? As a stimulus? Perhaps as the ignition spark for an explosive? The utilitarians are naïve. And in the end we would first have to know what is useful: here too their vision extends for only five steps. They have no conception of any great economy which does not know how to dispense with evil. …

[481]

Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying “there are only facts,” I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations.

– Friedrich Nietzsche (1954 [1895]) ‘Notes (1888), [291] and [481],’ in Walter Kaufmann (Ed. & Trans.), The Portable Nietzsche, London: Penguin Books, pp. 457-458.

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In his earlier work, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, Nietzsche writes about power and truth. It is possible that the misquote may also be a modern take on this passage:

‘Truth has need of power. — In itself truth is no power at all — whatever its flatterers of the Enlightenment may be accustomed to say to the contrary! – It has, rather, to draw power over to its side, or go over to the side of power, or it will perish again and again! This has been proved sufficiently and more than sufficiently!’

Friedrich Nietzsch (1997 [1881]) ‘Book V, 535,’ in Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter (Eds), R. J. Hollingdale (Trans.), Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.212.