A motivational quote attributed to the former British prime minister has been widely circulated online. We decided to check if she said anything like that.

This phrase, attributed to Margaret Thatcher, is popular on websites with selections aphorisms And quotes famous personalities. Social network users also share it, for example Facebook*, "VKontakte" And Twitter, as well as blogging platforms (“Zen", LiveJournal). Service visitors questions And answers they are interested in who the author of this statement is - most often they are answered that it is the “iron lady”.

Despite the fact that the statement has spread very widely in Russian, it is much less common in English, and almost always either together with the Russian-language version or in blogs of Russian-speaking people. In addition, in English, unlike Russian, there are two versions of the statement: “Never give up, and you will see how others give up” and “Never give up, and you will see others surrender.” This indirectly indicates that the phrase was most likely translated from another language, hence the discrepancies. But this is strange, given that it was in English that the British Prime Minister most likely should have said it.

All famous public speeches of the former British Prime Minister are collected on website Margaret Thatcher Foundation. More than 8,000 texts of speeches, interviews and other statements by the politician have been published there. Nothing like this "Verified" quote in this digital archive discover failed.

The search phrase appeared on the Internet (mainly in the form signatures participants in various forums or as mottos Internet users) back in the early 2010s, but was not attributed to Thatcher. In some sources The author of the statement was named Mikhail Tolstykh, who was killed in 2017, one of the commanders of the armed units of the self-proclaimed DPR, better known under the pseudonym Givi. Judging by memories his mother, this phrase really was his motto and even hung above the entrance to the unit where Tolstoy served. However, given that the quote was found on the Internet before 2014, when Givi became widely known, there is no reason to believe that he was the author of this statement.

The earliest use of this quote indicating the authorship of the British Prime Minister, which Verified was able to find, is fast on the social network X (Twitter), published in the profile of journalist and TV presenter Ksenia Sobchak on September 28, 2012. He received 580 retweets and, even if he was not the first case of such an attribution, could have contributed to the rooting of this statement on the Russian-language Internet precisely as the words of the British Prime Minister.

This is not the only statement attributed to Thatcher that appears on Sobchak’s Twitter account. So, in March 2012, TV presenter published quote “People hate you at first for making unpopular decisions, but the next day they thank you.” There is a similar line in the biopic "Iron Lady", which Sobchak I looked that day. Judging by the fact that there is no such statement in the archives of the Thatcher Foundation, most likely the scriptwriters came up with this phrase. It is likely that Sobchak could have come across the motivational quote in question in a publication about Thatcher or some film about politics.

So there is no reason to believe that Thatcher ever talked about not giving up so you can see others give up. There is no such quote in the digitized and well-researched archives of her statements, and in the English-language segment of the Internet it is quite rare. The phrase began appearing in online publications in the early 2010s, but was not attributed to Thatcher at the time. The first case of such an attribution that Verified was able to find was a post on Twitter by TV presenter Ksenia Sobchak, who probably credited Thatcher by mistake.

*Russian authorities think the company Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Cover photo: Bart Molendijk/Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons