Without music, life would be a mistake.

Nietzsche wrote this line in the late 1880s, after his break with Richard Wagner and during the intensely productive final phase of his career. Although he had turned against Wagner’s cultural politics and metaphysics, Nietzsche never abandoned the conviction that music is a uniquely powerful art—one that reaches beneath rational argument to the level of instinct, mood, and bodily vitality. The remark appears in a section of aphorisms where he reflects on art, culture, and the conditions that make life affirmable. It also resonates with his own biography: Nietzsche was a trained musician and composer, and music remained central to his emotional life even as illness and isolation deepened.

The aphorism compresses Nietzsche’s broader claim that life needs aesthetic justification. “Mistake” here is not a logical error so much as an existential failure: without art—especially music—existence would feel intolerable, flat, or nihilistic. Music exemplifies a form of meaning that does not depend on moral doctrine or metaphysical “truths”; it can transfigure suffering into something bearable or even joyous. In Nietzschean terms, music helps enact an affirmation of life as it is, including its pain and contingency. The line is thus less a sentimental praise of entertainment than a philosophical statement about art’s role in making life livable and worth saying “yes” to.

1) "Without music, life would be an error."
2) "Without music, life would be a mistake." (common English rendering)
3) "Without music, life would be a mistake—" (often quoted with a trailing dash, reflecting aphoristic formatting)