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Who really said it

If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known

Not documented from Tolstoy — a 1939 third-hand recollection Thomas J. Yates Cornell class of 1902 · Utah electrical engineer · the first person known to put this sentence in print
Documented only at third hand, and contradicted by the one firsthand published record. In copyright

The sentence has never been traced to anything Leo Tolstoy wrote or is recorded as saying. Its earliest known appearance is Thomas J. Yates’s article in the February 1939 Improvement Era ↗, where Yates recounts a conversation he says he had at Cornell in 1900 with Andrew D. White, who was recalling a meeting with Tolstoy in 1894. White’s own published account of that meeting reads very differently.

Last verified 10 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known” Widely credited to Leo Tolstoy, but no source in his own writings has been found. The line's earliest known printing is Thomas J. Yates, "Count Tolstoi and the 'American Religion'," The Improvement Era, February 1939, p. 94 — a story retold from memory in 1939 about a conversation of 1900 about a meeting of 1894. Andrew D. White's own published account of that 1894 meeting contains nothing like it. Via quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Leo Tolstoy. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, publisher of the Improvement Era; the estate of Thomas J. Yates). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Thomas J. Yates — electrical engineer from Scipio, Utah · author of the February 1939 Improvement Era article. Theme: "If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The earliest known printing

Article
Count Tolstoi and the “American Religion”
Published
The Improvement Era, vol. 42, no. 2 (February 1939), p. 94 — Salt Lake City
Author
Thomas J. Yates, recalling a conversation of 1900
Underlying event
Andrew D. White’s meetings with Tolstoy, March 1894

There have been great movements started in the past but they have died or been modified before they reached maturity. If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known. Improvement Era, February 1939, p. 94

These are the closing lines of a speech Yates puts in Tolstoy’s mouth. They are Yates’s 1939 recollection of White’s 1900 retelling of a conversation of 1894 — not a transcript, and not anything Tolstoy is known to have written down.

Scanned magazine issue
Read the February 1939 Improvement Era
The Improvement Era, February 1939 (Internet Archive)

How we verified this

In copyright

The only text this wording can be tied to is Yates’s article in the February 1939 Improvement Era — a 1939 American periodical, so it is treated here as in copyright rather than public domain, and we have not established whether its US registration was renewed. Andrew D. White’s Autobiography (New York: The Century Co., 1905), quoted alongside it, is long out of copyright.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Where the credit goes wrong

The line is quoted constantly as Tolstoy’s, usually with no source at all. There is a source — it is just three removes from Tolstoy, and the one firsthand record of the meeting it describes says something close to the opposite.

Leo Tolstoy Unverified

Nothing in Tolstoy’s books, essays, letters or diaries has been shown to contain it. Wikiquote’s Tolstoy page ↗ lists it only under Disputed, attributing its origin to Yates’s 1939 article rather than to anything Tolstoy wrote, and Leland A. Fetzer’s 1971 survey in Dialogue ↗ found the statements Yates reports in no other source.

Andrew Dickson White Contradicted

Yates presents White as his authority, but White had already published his own account. In chapter XXXVII of his Autobiography ↗ Tolstoy asks about the Mormons, thinks “two thirds of their religion deception,” and it is White — not Tolstoy — who makes the generational prediction, forecasting that once outside pressure eases the young will “split the whole body into sects and parties.”

Tolstoy at the plow Detail error

Yates has White walking a furrow beside Tolstoy as he ploughs. White’s account of the March 1894 visit has Tolstoy coming to his rooms in Moscow — a discrepancy Fetzer flags ↗ as evidence of how far the story had drifted.

Treat it as a story about Thomas J. Yates’s memory, not as a statement by Tolstoy. The only firsthand published record of the conversation is White’s own ↗, and it contains no such prediction.

Context

How a memory became a quotation

Andrew Dickson White was US minister to Russia in the early 1890s, and in March 1894 he spent several days in Moscow talking with Tolstoy. He wrote the visit up at length. In one exchange Tolstoy, who had been reading Latter-day Saint books, asks White about the Mormons, calls two thirds of their religion deception, and remarks that he would rather have a faith that claimed to dig its scriptures out of the ground than one that claimed they were let down from heaven. White answers that Mormonism cannot yet be judged, because this is its heroic period, and that the real test will come when the pressure lifts and the next generation starts asking questions.

In 1900 White told a version of that meeting to a young Utah student at Cornell. In 1939 the student, Thomas J. Yates, published what he remembered, and in his telling the generational test sits in a different mouth and points the other way: it is Tolstoy speaking, and the outcome is not fragmentation but the greatest power the world has ever known. Fetzer’s suggestion is that the two got swapped in memory — could Yates have recalled White’s own prediction and, over the years, attributed it to Tolstoy instead, simplifying it and altering its thrust? He puts it as a question rather than a finding, adding that there will never be a solution to the question of the reliability of Yates’s version. Either way, Yates’s is the version the internet inherited.

Both accounts predict a third-and-fourth-generation test. Whether one became the other is a question Fetzer says will never be settled.

Why the scholarship rejects it

Fetzer’s 1971 article in Dialogue is still the standard treatment. He does not accuse Yates of inventing anything; his objection is structural. The story reached print through two long stretches of memory — White recalling 1894 in 1900, Yates recalling 1900 in 1939 — and nothing else in the record corroborates it.

Tolstoy’s genuine interest in Mormonism is not in question; White’s own pages document that he had been reading some of the movement’s books. What is missing is any evidence that he ever predicted its triumph.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Power Hope Change

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Fetzer, "Tolstoy and Mormonism" (Dialogue, Spring 1971)dialoguejournal.com

The scholarly examination of the Yates story — the closest thing to a definitive verdict on this quote.
The Improvement Era, February 1939archive.org

The scanned issue containing Yates's article on page 94, the earliest known printing of the sentence.
White, Autobiography, Volume 2 (full text)gutenberg.org

Chapter XXXVII, "Walks and Talks with Tolstoi—March, 1894" — White's own record of what Tolstoy said about the Mormons.
Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, vol. 2 (1905 scan)archive.org

The Century Co. first-edition scan of the volume Fetzer cites.
Wikiquote: Leo Tolstoyen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote files this line under Disputed, tracing it to Yates's February 1939 Improvement Era article and citing Fetzer's rebuttal.
"Leo Tolstoy's view of Mormons as teaching 'The American Religion'"deseret.com

A Latter-day Saint newspaper's own account, which traces the quote to Yates in February 1939 and concedes the uncertainty.

The man who wrote it down

Who actually put this sentence in print

Thomas J. Yates

Cornell class of 1902 · electrical engineer from Scipio, Utah · author of the February 1939 Improvement Era article

Thomas J. Yates served as a Latter-day Saint missionary in the Southern States from 1895 to 1898, then left Utah for Cornell University, graduating in 1902 as an electrical engineer — details given in the Improvement Era’s own note on him. In 1900, as a student, he was introduced to Andrew Dickson White, Cornell’s first president and then US ambassador to Germany, who invited him back to talk about Mormonism; Yates says the invitation grew out of White’s conversation with Tolstoy. Nearly four decades later he published his memory of that evening, and with it the sentence that has been circulating under Tolstoy’s name ever since.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented printing

Thomas J. Yates, "Count Tolstoi and the 'American Religion'," The Improvement Era 42, no. 2 (February 1939): 94. No source in Tolstoy's own writings has been identified; compare Andrew Dickson White, Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, vol. 2 (New York: The Century Co., 1905), chap. 37, "Walks and Talks with Tolstoi—March, 1894."

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known’?” Last verified 10 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-mormonism-is-able-to-endure-unmodified-until-it-reaches/

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