The "iron chancellor" is often attributed to the expression that the secret of the legislative process is unlikely to like the layman. We checked the reliability of such an attribution.

Comparison of lawmaking and the process of preparing sausages is presented as a quote from Bismarck in a variety of sources - from Crossing with aphorisms to the portal Germania-Onlinewho was created by the FRG FRG and talks about Germany to foreigners. The phrase became popular in social networks - users attribute it to German policy Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms. The quote in one form or another has become widespread not only in Russia. For example, in 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron Commented His negotiations with the American leader Donald Trump is as follows: “As Bismarck said, if we told people what sausages are made of, they would hardly have to eat them.” Sometimes the expression is attributed to another policy-the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (at least, a selection of his photographs taken by Kommersant, It is entitled Very similar to saying).

It is significant that the verified phrase does not have a “canonical” version. In different sources, you can find more than a dozen formulations slightly different from each other: for example, “laws are like sausages, it is better not to see how they are made” or “The one who knows how laws and sausages are made in Germany can never sleep calmly.” Exists And the option in which the "sausages" are replaced by the "sausage". It is alarming that this allegedly statement of the chancellor is not mentioned in authoritative sources like Collections Quotes on the website of the Foundation Otto von Bismarck - an organization that studies the legacy of politics.

The earliest mention of the phrase checked precisely as the statement of Bismarck is our colleagues from the project The Quote Investigator discovered in the 1933 edition (Iron Chancellor died Back in 1898). Author of the textbook "Government in the United States" He wrote: “I think this Bismarck said that a person who wants to maintain his respect for sausages and laws should not see how they are produced. As for laws, knowledge of how they are created can increase our respect for them and their creators; Be that as it may, we, at least, can reasonably express our discontent. ” As you can see, at that time the attribution was not yet unequivocal, although, according to the results of the study, The Quote Investigator, the expression began to be represented as a quote from Bismarck after a quarter of a century.

Quote researcher Fred Shapiro discoveredThat for the first time a phrase, similar to the attached bismarck, appeared during the lifetime of a politician, but only its author is another person. In 1869, The Daily Cleveland Held newspaper quoted the lawyer and writer John Godfrey Sax: “Laws - like sausages, cease to arouse respect in proportion to our knowledge of how they are preparing.” The Quote Investigator confirmed this find, although Found A quote in a source published two days earlier than that number of Cleveland newspaper.