Attribution of Schopenhauer's Three Stages of Truth

[HappyMonday]

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

This quote keeps cropping up in conversation with conspiracy types, and is often incorrectly attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer.


The following document examines the history of the quote, and the use of the 'stages of truth' device in detail.

https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/Papers/stages.pdf

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The oldest quote which I have been able to find that suggests truth goes through several stages is due to the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788{1860), who wrote in 1818 [29]

Der Wahrheit ist allerzeit nur ein kurzes Siegesfest beschieden, zwischen den beiden langen ZeitrÄaumen, wo sie als Paradox verdammt und als Trivial gering geschÄatzt wird.


which is translated as follows:


To truth only a brief celebration of victory is allowed between the two long periods during which it is condemned as paradoxical, or disparaged as trivial.

[29, Preface to the First Edition, p. xxv]

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I have also found what appear to be three spurious attributions of the "stages of truth" quote. The most prevalent is the following version:

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

This quotation and its minor variants, which may be found on many Internet web sites, Usenet news postings, and letters to the editor of newspapers, is nearly always attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer. For example, see [26, p. 93].

However, I have not found this particular quotation in Schopenhauer's writings; neither have Schopenhauer experts that I have consulted been able to produce a citation.

Why has this quotation come to be attributed to Schopenhauer? It seems likely this is due in part to its citation in a popular book of quotations, first published in 1981, that has since gone through several different titles and printings [11].

In the United States, it is called The Harper Book of Quotations, and the quotation appears, for example, on page 451 of the 3rd edition:

Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident.

Whilst Schopenhauer may be the first person to suggest 'stages of truth' in 1818, the quote in wide circulation appears to have evolved much later.

[Mick]

That's an excellent bit of quote debunking there by Shallit. Unfortunately debunking a quote does not really stop people from using it.

The common usage of this quote often forgets that it's getting to the third stage that qualifies something as truth, not the first.

I like to juxtapose it with this real quote:

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But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

- Carl Sagan

Which Shallit also references on the first page.

[HappyMonday]

That's an excellent bit of quote debunking there by Shallit. Unfortunately debunking a quote does not really stop people from using it.

The common usage of this quote often forgets that it's getting to the third stage that qualifies something as truth, not the first.

I like to juxtapose it with this real quote:

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But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

- Carl Sagan

Which Shallit also references on the first page.

I agree, and that Sagan line is gold.

The fruit in the other thread is the third time today I've seen the subject quote, glad it prompted me to search.

[MikeC]

Whether you be a genius or not - to fulfill these 3 stages you first need to have something that is actually true.

Bozo is/was/will be, after all, a comic genius