Aphorism attributed to the great Indian has long become a classic. We checked whether Mahatma Gandhi was really his author.

This quote is almost perfectly embedded in the speech of politicians and slogans of activists, regardless of the views that they adhere to. So, in the USA it was used by the Republican Donald Trump for the election speech of 2016, and his failed rival, democrat Bernie Sanders, A year earlier. Both of them referred to Mahatma Gandhi. In Russia, aphorism decorates a selection of quotes from Gandhi on RIA Novosti site. A winged phrase includes an annotation to the biographical book of Alexander Vladimir “Great Gandhi. The righteous of the authorities ".

A fluent study of the distribution of quotes in the literature shows that it began to be associated with Gandhi in the 1982 region, and in English -speaking sources. In particular, a quote in a slightly distorted form can be found in one of the issues of Win magazine, published by the American committee of non -violent actions:

“Gandhi once noticed that each movement passes through four stages: at first they ignore you, then they insult you; Then they deal with you, and then you win. ”

All earlier references to something similar to this winged phrase are not related to the personality of the Indian figure. If you try to turn to the origins, then in the book of Arthur Schopenhauer “Peace as the will and representation”, published in 1819, you can meet the following thought:

“The truth is destined only to a brief victorious celebration between two long periods of time, when it is rejected as a paradox and when it is neglected as triviality.”

Later, this quote began to be transmitted as “truth passes through three stages: at first it is ridiculed, then they resisted it violently and, finally, accept it as obvious.” Approximately in this form (but only instead of the truth the problem is mentioned), it appears in the book of the German geographer Kurt Gasser, published in 1913.

Four years will pass, and already English -speaking readers will get acquainted with the next variation of the winged phrase thanks to the article by E. Morgan in the journal “Safety of Security”:

“They say any new idea should go through three stages. Firstly, it is ridiculed; Secondly, it becomes the subject of the dispute; Thirdly, they accept it. ”

Most likely, this article was read by the American trade union leader Nicholas Klein, who, speaking on May 18, 1918 in Baltimore in front of members of the united trade union of sewing industry workers, declared: “At first they do not notice you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack and want to burn you. And then they are erecting a monument to you. ”

This is the closest phrase to the one attributed to Gandhi. As for the works of the Indian himself, only a few similar thought in him is found in the book “The Battle of Freedom”:

“The nation should give an effective response to an organized refusal of cooperation and turn ridicule into respect. Mockery is similar to repression. Both are inferior to respect when it does not give the desired effect. ” And also: "In a civilized country, when ridicule does not kill the movement, they begin to respect him."

As you can see, the form in which the Gandhi quote is distributed is much more like an excerpt from the speech of Nicholas Klein. And in any case, the Indian laureate of the Nobel Prize of the world cannot be called the author of the aphorism in question.