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All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
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As cited in Truth : Resuming the Age of Reason (2006) by Mahlon Marr; the earliest attribution of this to Schopenhauer yet found dates to 1951 (Chemurgic Digest, Vol. 10-11, p.13); it is also sometimes misattributed to George Bernard Shaw, and a similar statement is often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
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Variant : 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.
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Many versions in 19th century medical journals but with no reference to Schopenhauer e.g., "For it is ever so with any great truth. It must first be opposed, then ridiculed, after a while accepted, and then comes the time to prove that it was not new, and that the credit of it belongs to some one else." (Dr. J. Marion Sims, 1868, Richmond & Louisville Medical Journal, Vol. 7, p. 290)
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It has been said that the reception of an original contribution to knowledge may be divided into three phases: during the first it is ridiculed as not true, impossible or useless; during the second, people say that there may be something in it but it would never be of any practical use; and in the third and final phase, when the discovery has received general recognition, there are usually people who say that it is not original and has been anticipated by others. [a note at the bottom of the page adds: This saying seems to have originated from Sir James Mackenzie (The Beloved Physician, by R. M. Wilson, John Murray, London)]
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William Ian Beardmore Beveridge, in The Art of Scientific Investigation (1955), p. 113

 

Arthur Schopenhauer

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First, it is ridiculed; second, it is subject to argument: third, it is accepted.

 

Arthur Schopenhauer

 

To us art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risks.
2. This world of imagination is fancy-free and violently opposed to common sense.
3. It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way not his way.
4. We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.
5. It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. (Rothko said this is the essence of academicism.)
6. There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing.
7. We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.

 

Adolph Gottlieb

 

This world of imagination is fancy-free and violently opposed to common sense.

 

Mark Rothko

 

This world of imagination is fancy-free and violently opposed to common sense.

 

Barnett Newman

 

I esteem myself happy to have as great an ally as you in my search for truth. I will read your work ... all the more willingly because I have for many years been a partisan of the Copernican view because it reveals to me the causes of many natural phenomena that are entirely incomprehensible in the light of the generally accepted hypothesis. To refute the latter I have collected many proofs, but I do not publish them, because I am deterred by the fate of our teacher Copernicus who, although he had won immortal fame with a few, was ridiculed and condemned by countless people (for very great is the number of the stupid).

 

Galileo Galilei