The network is popularly attributed to the Irish writer that, despite the development of technological progress, one must not forget about humanity. We decided to check if he said something like that.

The phrase indicating the authorship of the show is often found on sites with selection Quotes of famous personalitiesas well as on cognitive And entertainment Portals. Social networks (""VKontakte" X, Facebook*, Instagram*, Pinterest) And Platform blog Actively share this quote. There is a phrase on the page of the show in "Wikitate" - however, unlike most other quotes, its source is not indicated.

George Bernard show - Irish writer, Laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, in opinion Some critics, the most significant English -language playwright after William Shakespeare. Since the death of the show in 1950, his literary heritage, diaries, letters and other preserved written sources have been carefully studied and digitized, so it is not difficult to check whether it belongs to this or that statement.

In English, a statement about birds, fish and people is popular no less than in Russian, and it is also often attributed to the show (although there are other options, for example, Maxim Gorky or Martin Luther King). "Verified" tried to find this phrase in works Show, as well as in authoritative resources specializing in the study of his heritage, sites International Society of the show And British Society of the showFounded during the life of the playwright. An accurate quote or at least close to it in terms of meaning could not be detected. Apparently attribute The show began this aphorism only in the 21st century, and, as often happens in the case of incorrect attribution, without specifying a specific work.

Moreover, other authorship options, common in the English -language segment of the Internet, are closer to the truth. American civil rights fighter Martin Luther King really included this expression in his Nobel lecture In 1964 - however, in his interpretation, we are talking not just about humanity, but about fraternal relations between people: “The richer we become financially, the poorer we become morally and spiritually. We learned to fly through the air like birds, and swim around the sea, like fish, but we did not learn the simple art of living together like brothers. ”

The authentication project of quotes QUOTE Investigator Found The earlier mention of this aphorism is not literal, but close in meaning. In 1925, an American historian and journalist (as well as a member Ku-Klux-Clan And a supporter Eugenics) Lotropic Stodard In his work "Social classes in post -war Europe"Attributed her to Maxim Gorky. However, the Soviet classic, too, most likely, was not its original author. Stoddard tells a story that allegedly occurred with Gorky: after the writer’s performance in front of the mainly peasant audience on science and technological progress, one of the listeners objected to him with the same phrase about birds, fish and people. Whether this actually happened is unknown, since neither in the works and letters of Gorky, nor in the memoirs of his contemporaries, such a story could not be found.

However, in 1927, the Cro -Krug Almanac was an article by Gorky "Notes of the writer". At the very beginning, he writes: “A man of the 20th century begins to think this way:“ I fly in the air, swim under water, I can move around the earth at a speed that was not thought of before ... ”<...> At the same time, he continues to live in the highest degree bad and is more bad about the“ neighbor ”, to such to himself.” Despite the fact that the wording is significantly different from the disassembled, the meaning is quite close.

Later, the writer returned to this thought in a similar formulation in his other article - “The drought will be destroyed", Which was published in the newspaper" Komsomolskaya Pravda "in 1931. Gorky writes: "He [the human mind] taught us to fly through the air, swim underwater, he gave the man a fabulous power - we learned to speak with each other through distances of thousands of kilometers." Further, in the article, he draws attention several times that in the capitalist world, despite technological progress, a person is a wolf, which in general also corresponds to the meaning of the dismantled quote. Despite the fact that both the first and second article were published a few years after the release of Stoddard’s book and no peasant is mentioned in them, Gorky could well make such a speech, get the aforementioned audience response to it and subsequently include these thoughts in the article.

Thus, “verified” could not detect evidence that Bernard show has any relation to the quote about the acquired abilities of mankind to fly like birds, and swim like fish, but a lack of ability to live like people. This statement in a very close formulation was in use long before the death of the playwright, and attributed his show only in the early 2000s.

Photo on the cover: National Gallery of Ireland

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