First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

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Notes from Wikiquote

And, my friends, in this story you have a history of this entire movement. First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you. And that, is what is going to happen to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. | Proceedings of the Third Biennial Convention of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (1918), p. 53 | In Freedom's Battle (1922), Gandhi wrote this | Unfortunately for His Excellency the movement is likely to grow with ridicule as it is certain to flourish on repression. No vital movement can be killed except by the impatience, ignorance or laziness of its authors. A movement cannot be 'insane' that is conducted by men of action as I claim the members of the Non-co-operation Committee are. … Ridicule is like repression. Both give place to respect when they fail to produce the intended effect. … It will be admitted that non-co-operation has passed the stage [of] ridicule. Whether it will now be met by repression or respect remains to be seen. … But the testing time has now arrived. In a civilized country when ridicule fails to kill a movement it begins to command respect. | Source: The Project Gutenberg EBook of Freedom's Battle, 2nd edition, by Mahatma Gandhi, 1922 gutenberg.net

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mahatma Gandhi (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.