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

—  Mahatma Gandhi

Describing the stages of a winning strategy of nonviolent activism. There is no record of Gandhi saying this. A close variant of the quotation first appears in a 1918 US trade union address by Nicholas Klein:
:* 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 http://books.google.com/books?id=QrcpAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA53&dq=%22First+they+ignore+you%22
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 http://www.gutenberg.net/1/0/3/6/10366/10366-h/10366-h.htm
Misattributed

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Mahatma Gandhi 238
pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-rul… 1869–1948

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