So I’ve been seeing images all over the internet with Gandhi’s face, claiming that he said “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

And it’s a charming quote – the repetition and then the break, addressing you directly at the end, shifting agency. There are just two problems:

1. Gandhi never said it. It was actually union leader, lawyer, and Marcus Garvey-supporter Nicholas Klein. Gandhi did say “when ridicule fails to kill a movement it begins to command respect,” which sounds similar but offers a lot less vicarious victory frisson.
   
2. Klein never said “then you win.” He said “And then they build monuments to you.” The difference may seem subtle but it’s critical: neither Gandhi nor Klein believed in happily ever after. They understood what it meant to fight for something: that the fight will never be over. Making monuments – granting symbolic victories – can be a tactic as much as anything else, to render lip service instead of actual concessions, to maintain a hierarchical relationship, to disempower through paternalistic approval. Theater director Julian Beck used the quote in exactly this sense: “Then, they heap you with honors. Or make you into a statue. Stone. Dead.” “Then you win” promises eucatastrophe. It’s the conservative fantasy that Superman stories are built from; that all would be well except for this temporary aberration – once it’s cleared up, paradise must inevitably return.